


Wake

by servantofclio



Series: Sewers to Stars [11]
Category: Mass Effect, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-09 20:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3263900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's January, 2184. Galactic bad news hits close to home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

On a winter afternoon, New York City lies muffled under yesterday’s blanket of snow, already growing dingy from traffic. Its rhythms are slowed by snow, its street life subdued. The snowstorm was followed by a cold front that keeps most of the city’s inhabitants chasing away the cold in warm apartments and theaters and bars. 

For the turtles, winter is a constant battle against the chill anyway. Once Donnie said it was a shame they can’t just hibernate their way through it, like some turtles do, and the next morning it took all three of them to drag Mikey out of bed, while he loudly proclaimed he was hibernating. To go outside, they have to bundle up in the best thermal layers they can come up with. It’s cumbersome and confining, and keeps their patrols short. The city’s criminals aren’t any more inclined than anyone else to go outside in these conditions, so it works out. The lair is drafty, but more comfortable than being aboveground. On the coldest days, like now, everyone tends to pile into the same room, with space heaters and a pile of worn blankets and an endless supply of entertainment. 

This afternoon, Donnie’s still in the lab and Splinter’s in the dojo, but Casey’s off work early, so he’s piled into the living room with the rest of them. They have claimed their favorite seats and have just managed to agree on the schedule for a bad-movie marathon, saving Donnie’s favorites for later, when he finishes up whatever he’s working on. 

That’s when Leo’s ‘tool goes off with an incoming call. 

The readout says it’s April. Leo’s first thought is to wonder why she’s calling him instead of Donnie, although the sound of welding coming from the lab helps answer that. Even so, he’s not entirely relaxed when he answers. Calls from April have led to trouble often enough. Is this going to be something that drags them out into the late afternoon cold? 

Leo doesn’t say any of that, though. He sticks to “Hey, April, what’s up?” 

On the other end of the call, April breathes in, a thick wet sound as if she’s been crying. It sets all of Leo’s nerves alert, and he tenses, ready to get up and off the couch. “What’s wrong?” 

“I’m fine,” April says, but her voice sounds strained. “It’s Shepard... she...” 

“What happened?” he asks, sharp enough that Raph and Casey and Mikey turn to look at him. 

Another choked-sounding breath. “She... I don’t want to say it. Just turn on the news.” 

With a heavy sense of foreboding knotting his gut, Leo grabs the remote and switches to a news channel. 

Mikey says, “Leoooooo!” but it’s a token protest, and they both know it. The rest of them can’t hear April, but Leo’s tension has infected the rest of the room. Raph and Casey don’t even grumble about the change in plans. 

On the screen, an announcer with glossy hair and perfect make-up is talking about the recent snowstorm. 

“What’s going on?” Raph asks, shifting toward the edge of his seat. 

Leo’s frowning at the screen. “April said... what are we watching for, April?” She’d mentioned Shepard, but if the Reaper invasion was happening already, you’d think the newscaster would be talking about it. 

There’s an audible sniff on the other end. “Just... wait a minute, they’ll get back to it.” 

“April says what?” Donnie, coming out of the lab behind them. 

The newscaster’s expression turns serious now. “In our top story of the day, once again, Systems Alliance sources are reporting the death of the first human Spectre, Commander Artemisia Shepard.” 

Whatever Leo had expected, that wasn’t it. There’s a chorus of harsh breaths around him, and then the room falls silent. 

“Official Alliance sources confirm that Commander Shepard was killed in action in one of the latest actions of hostilities with the geth, and that her ship, the SSV _Normandy_ , was destroyed.” The screen flashes up an image of the ship, and of Shepard: one of the publicity stills that came out after her appointment as Spectre was announced. The image is pretty clearly manipulated; it makes her scars almost invisible. In the image, her chin is raised, bold and confident, the picture of humanity’s hero. The newscaster’s eyebrows pull together as she continues, “We also have unconfirmed eyewitness reports that suggest the commander was ejected into space after her ship was attacked, and that, and more unconfirmed reports indicate that the commander’s oxygen line may have been damaged in the attack.” 

Somebody gasps. Leo’s not sure who. Not him, because he’s holding his breath; he lets it out now and takes in another breath, full of the familiar slightly-musty smells of the lair and full of _oxygen_. Easy, free, always there when you need it, until you’re in space and it’s not. 

“Searches of the area have found no trace of the commander’s body, leading to this speculation about the precise cause of death. The tragic loss of the Hero of the Citadel—” 

“Turn it off,” says Raph, loud and sharp. Leo doesn’t want to hear any more, either. One click, and the screen goes silent. 

“That doesn’t make sense,” Mikey says, slowly. 

It doesn’t. It was a month ago that they saw her, just about, and she was fine. She was fine. A little banged up, arm in a sling. Nothing too serious; they were all veterans of worse, and could tell the difference. She’d been laughing and healthy and _fine_ , smiling over the gifts she’d brought, promising to drop a line when she could. She worried about secure communications—she worried about it more than they did, even—but she said that being Spectre gave her better access. 

“Fifteen seconds,” Donnie says, coming up on Leo’s left, standing next to the couch. “On average, a human being deprived of oxygen loses consciousness within fifteen seconds, so...” He trails off, even as Leo is reaching for his arm to signal _not now_. 

Mikey’s face is already crumpling. “They can’t be right. Can they?” 

“I don’t know why anyone would make up a story like that,” Leo replies, looking around to gauge everyone’s reactions. Raph’s mouth is settling into a tight scowl that’s... not one Leo recognizes, which is sets him further on edge. Splinter’s just emerged from the dojo, but, from his bowed head and the set of his ears, has obviously heard the report like the rest of them. Casey looks shocked, and wary, glancing around the room. Donnie, at Leo’s side, is staring into the distance, eyes unfocused and muttering to himself. Leo catches fragments of numbers and something about velocity, and realizes that Donnie is working it like a physics problem, visualizing the scene. 

He’s doing that because he can’t _not_. “It should have been...” Donnie says, and then trails off again. 

_Quick_ , is the unspoken word. It should have been quick, at least the part she was awake for. 

Leo does grab his brother’s wrist, then, to pull him back to the here and now, and Donnie blinks. His eyes refocus and he gives Leo a sidelong look that might be grateful. 

“I’m going to wrap up here as soon as I can,” April says into Leo’s ear. He’d almost forgotten she was still on the line. Her voice still sounds thick and heavy. “I’ll... I don’t know, I’ll come up with an excuse to leave work early and come over.” 

“Okay. See you soon.” He disconnects. “April’s coming over,” he says, into the charged air. Everyone looks stricken, starting to curl in on themselves, shoulders slumping. He has to do something to shake them out of it. Otherwise they’ll all collapse into black moods that could last for days. “Then we can...” Leo stops, because he doesn’t know what they can do. He feels as though everyone around him is on the verge of crumbling, and he needs to do something to stop it, to shore them up... but they’re aimless here. He can’t tell them to focus on the mission, because they don’t have one. There’s nothing for any of them to do. They’re used to danger, to risking their own lives, but this? This is different. Shepard hasn’t lived with them for years, but she was theirs when she was young, and she’s still one of their own. And she died as far away as it’s possible to get, cold and alone and unable to fight back. Lost in space with a damaged oxygen line, nothing to fight against... that’s not how anyone with that much fight in her is supposed to end. 

“Then we can what?” Raph snaps, loud and harsh, echoing Leo’s own thoughts. Next to Leo, Donnie flinches. “Do what? Sit here and cry about it?” 

Mikey’s shoulders hunch. He throws a reproachful look in Raph’s direction, and Leo realizes that he _is_ crying. He feels a flash of irritation at Raph’s thoughtlessness, even if it’s typical. 

“Raphael,” Splinter says, gently, but with the weight of authority. “Do not—” 

“Don’t _what_ , sensei, there’s nothing _to_ do, this is all— this is bullshit.” Raph launches himself out of his seat. He stands there for a second, fists clenching at his sides, all coiled tension, and then starts toward the exit. 

Leo means to go after him. He’s too slow, struggling out of the blankets he’d wrapped up in as he stumbles off the couch, too weighted down to keep up with his brother’s fury. “Raph, wait, don’t—” 

Raph flings up one hand in a warding gesture, without looking back, and is gone. Leo stands flat-footed, feeling about as useless as he ever has. 

“I’ll go talk to him,” says Casey, already getting up and reaching for his coat. 

Right. Coats. It’s winter, and Raph just went out without anything more than a sweatshirt on. “Make sure he doesn’t freeze anything,” Leo sighs. Or hurt anyone, he adds silently. Whatever killed Shepard is a long way away, not available for simple vengeance. Whoever, or whatever, Raph finds to vent his fury on isn’t going to help. 

Casey nods, waving as he reaches the exit, a brief bit of normality that leaves the remaining four of them standing in silence. 

“There is no shame in grief, my sons,” Splinter says. “However we grieve.” 

“We should stay together,” Leo says, though his voice sounds thin and tired even to himself. Wouldn’t it be better that way? 

When he turns to face the others, Donnie is still standing right where he was, and Splinter leans on his cane, his head bowed. Mikey’s shoulders are shaking. That, at least, is something Leo can do something about. He settles back onto the couch, wrapping an arm around Mikey’s shell and pulling him close. Mikey lets out the sob he’d obviously been holding onto, leaning willingly into Leo’s shoulder. Donnie climbs over the arm of the couch to take Mikey’s other side. Raph might have bailed, but at least the rest of them are here together, with the gentle weight of Splinter’s presence behind them. Mikey sobs louder. He’s always been the one of them who lets go most easily. Donnie has an arm around Mikey, too, trying to make soothing noises. 

Leo remembers when he first saw Shepard, when she was nothing but a skinny kid, thirteen and sharp-faced, how she’d looked at them without a trace of fear. He remembers her fifteen and gangling, uneasy in her new height, insisting she didn’t need to go to the ER for the slashes on her face; remembers her turning eighteen, eating giant slices of chocolate cake and showing off her enlistment forms, glowing with pride; remembers her twenty-three, hunched up on the roof, tears tracking down her cheeks as she told him about what happened on Akuze. 

Remembers her twenty-nine, arm in a sling, sprawled in a fancy hotel suite, laughing. 

“Damn it, Shepard,” he whispers, and holds his brother a little tighter. 

When April gets there half an hour later, Mikey isn’t the only one crying.


	2. Chapter 2

Raph isn’t surprised when Casey catches up with him where he sits on a rooftop, back against a ventilation shaft. The winter air cooled off the heat of his fury fast enough. It’s still there, banked, but now he mostly feels cold and heavy. It’s too cloudy to see the stars. Just as well, since Shepard’s out there and not coming back. Now Raph is just staring at the concrete roof, littered with bits of brick and trash and bird crap and dingy snow. He sees Casey climb up onto the roof out of the corner of his eye, but stays quiet. 

Casey spots him right away anyway, and sighs. He doesn’t say anything, though. He just lopes over and folds up his long legs and parks himself beside Raph, so they sit there side by side, looking at nothing. Behind them, a half dozen or so pigeons warble and coo. 

“You cold?” Casey says after a minute. 

Raph’s freezing. Hell if he’s going to admit it. He says, “I’m fine.” 

“It sucks,” Casey says a minute later. 

Raph rolls his eyes. Way to state the obvious, Casey. “No shit.” 

“Shepard deserved better than that.” 

“No _shit_ ,” Raph repeats, with an edge of warning in his voice. Talking isn’t gonna help, is it? There aren’t even words for this shit. He’s not in the mood for all the stupid crap people say when something bad happens. 

Casey sighs, but shuts up. Good. 

When does anyone get what they deserve, anyway? 

_“So do you think I should enlist, or not?”_ _Shepard asked.  
_

_Raph looked at her out of the corner of his eye. They were standing on a rooftop just after twilight, but it was light enough to get a good look at her. She’d shot up and filled out since they’d met her. Taller than April, she wasn’t skin and bones any more, didn’t look like a hard breath would blow her away. She was fidgeting and looking at him all wary but bright-eyed, like a bird, and she had something in her hand. “Why?” he said. “What are you gonna do instead?”  
_

_She shrugged, scratching the side of her neck and looking away. “I dunno, I mean—April said I should think about college, or maybe I could get a job or something—” She looked down at the thing she was carrying, a crumpled piece of paper. Looked like she’d been carrying it around a while. Raph’s eyes narrowed.  
_

_“What’s that?” he demanded.  
_

_“I made a list,” she said. “Pros and cons.”  
_

_“Let me see that,” he said, snatching the paper out of her hand. Shepard grabbed at it, but she was way too slow. She scowled at him and huffed out a breath as she crossed her arms. It only took him a moment to scan down the list, and he snorted. “Let me guess, Donnie told you to make a list.”  
_

_Her nose wrinkled. “Yeah.”  
_

_“You don’t need it,” he told her, crumpling the paper into a ball and tossing it over the edge of the roof.  
_

_“Hey!”  
_

_“Just go,” Raph said.  
_

_She blinked, and her mouth fell open a little bit. Not a great look on her, or anyone, really. Made her look dumber than she was. “What?”  
_

_He glared at her. Why wasn’t she getting it? What was the point of all these lists and questions when she already knew perfectly well what she wanted? “What, did I stutter? Go. You’ve been talking about this forever, how you wanted to go out and see the galaxy, why are you stalling now?”  
_

_“I just... I...” She looked down. “It’s a big commitment.”  
_

_“So’s college. So’s a job. You always wanted to go, so don’t waste your life hiding out down here.”  
_

_“It wouldn’t be a waste...” she said, but she didn’t sound certain, so Raph kept going.  
_

_“Yeah, it would. You’re gonna be eighteen, you can do what you want, and you always wanted to enlist. You got nothing holding you back. You_ can _go, so_ go _.” How many times did he have to say it? Did she think no one_ else _ever wanted to get off this planet?  
_

_Shepard shifted her stance, fidgeting in place, and the last glow of the sky was enough to show her cheeks coloring a little. Looked like he’d made his point. She nodded, and he gave her a nod of satisfaction._

She would have gone anyway, he tells himself. Chances were she would have gone even without that push. 

Didn’t change the fact that he was the only one who’d told her to go. Everyone else had been wishy-washy. Think about it, they’d said, figure out what you want, blah blah. Like they didn’t know what she really wanted. It was plain what that was, always had been. She hadn’t spent all those years gawking at equations and planets with Donnie for nothing. The plan was always to get her grades up and study so she could have good options when she joined up. It was only in the last couple months that she’d got nervous and started talking about maybe staying here. 

She probably would have been smart and made up her mind the right way anyway. But he was the one who’d told her to go. 

“We should do something,” Casey says. 

Raph shivers. It’s getting colder, and darker, clouds lying heavy over the city. The cold steals in under his skin and sinks down without stopping the anger. “Like what? Can’t get the ones who did it.” 

“Not like that, like... we should have a wake, or a memorial, or something.” 

A pigeon flits down from its roost and paces in front of them, cocking its head to the side so it can watch them. Raph scowls at it. “Sounds like more talk.” 

Casey shakes his head. “No. We gotta do something. And you’re gonna freeze up here, dude, get up. Come back to my place if you don’t want to go home.” 

He hates to admit it, but Casey’s right. He’s been sitting here too long. It’s cold enough all his joints are stiffening. His knees ache. “Fine.” 

# 

After more than a decade—more like half a lifetime—of knowing the turtles, some things come to April automatically. Using a different sewer entrance from the one she used yesterday, for example; waiting and checking the vicinity until she’s sure there are no observers; winding her way through the tunnels beneath the city. She’s gotten into the habit of checking the security system as she goes to make sure the sensors are functional yet nearly invisible. It’s all engraved into her memory, how she goes through a routine that has to vary day to day, just in case anyone follows her. 

It’s a routine that she’s been used to since she was sixteen, but it’s never felt quite like this. 

She’s come to the lair after failure before. She knows what dejection and disappointment and guilt and furious acrimony taste like in her mind. She has come down to the lair to excitement, to parties, to jubilation, to boredom, and with all the times she’s moved apartments, it’s always been her second home. 

April braces herself as she approaches, this time. She’s not sure what to expect. Her own grief feels heavy but shapeless. It hasn’t sunk in yet, like those moments when she’s taken a hit but the pain hasn’t quite registered yet. It’ll come, eventually, shocking her nerves with sensation, but it’s not there yet. Her eyes feel heavy, like anything could set her off, but she’s not quite crying. 

Grief lies heavy in the familiar minds she can feel, too. Everything is doleful and clotted up, reminding her of a sky shrouded with clouds. Everything feels more muted than she expected, though. As she comes in and glances around the room, it doesn’t take long to guess why. Mikey’s half curled up on the couch, looking heartbroken, and Master Splinter is sitting next to him, speaking in a low voice; Donnie and Leo are standing to the side, talking quietly. “Where’s Raph?” she says. 

Leo’s face falls into a scowl. “He stormed out,” he says, sounding both weary and irritated. “Couldn’t just stay here with the rest of us, oh no, he had to be the dramatic one.” 

“Give him some slack, Leo,” Donnie says, turning to face April. “Hey, April.” His smile is a wan version of itself, and he drops it quickly, as if he’s not quite sure it’s okay to smile. April’s answering smile feels weak, too. 

“He and Shepard were close,” she points out. 

“I know that. I _am_ giving him slack. I give him a ton of slack. We’re not kids any more. He should know better than to go running off the minute things get difficult,” Leo says. 

“You know sometimes it’s better to let him work it out on his own,” says Donnie, calm and reasonable as usual. His eyes are reddened and damp—so are Leo’s, April sees—and she catches the fuzzy threads of worry that both brothers are throwing off. 

“It’s a little cold out, but it’s not that bad,” she says. “Casey’s with him, right?” 

“Casey went after him,” Leo says, still frowning. “I should check in to make sure he actually caught up with him.” He steps away to send the message, and April sighs. She knows perfectly well that Leo’s constitutionally incapable of _not_ worrying, but sometimes he spins himself up more than is good for anyone. 

Donnie sighs, too, and April exchanges glances and a hesitant half-smile with him. “As you can see, the mood around here is just great,” Donnie says. 

“Of course it’s not great,” she says. “You—we all just lost a friend, Donnie. We’re not supposed to be okay.” 

He snorts. “It sounds so sensible when you put it that way.” 

April dares, finally, to reach out to him for a hug. It felt too awkward at first, with Leo right there, too. Even now, as Donnie wordlessly accepts and returns the hug, she feels much too self-conscious, a tiny voice in the back of her head wondering whether she’s holding onto him too long, or too tight. She could just bury herself in his arms for hours and be content, but she doesn’t want to make this moment weird, doesn’t want to make him uncomfortable. She steps back quickly as soon as his grip on her loosens. “You doing all right?” she asks. 

“Yeah,” Donnie says, although he blinks, twice, a little too quickly. “I mean, I... I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet.” 

“I know what you mean,” April says, with feeling. 

“Hi, April,” says an unexpectedly small voice from the couch. 

“Oh, Mikey,” she says, as he sniffles. April leans over, and Mikey she can hug as long as she likes, and as hard as she likes. He’s always so free with his feelings, and that’s a relief at moments like these, when Leo’s burying his sorrow under frustration and Donnie’s trying to somehow stay upbeat and normal. So she hugs Mikey for a long time, as long as he hugs her back, and her eyes are wet when she finally pulls away. Splinter briefly sets a hand on her head, and she gives him a smile that’s a little frayed around the edges. “Thanks, Sensei.” 

“Thank you for being here,” he says. “Your presence is always a comfort.” 

Her smile crumbles. “Yeah,” she says. “For me, too.” If this had happened while she was in London— but no, when she was in London, Shepard was named a Spectre. She had watched the initiation on the extranet, and now her eyes are growing blurry. 

“It’s not right,” Mikey says, and he sounds more bewildered than anything else. “I mean, she was fine like a month ago, and she’d just _won_... it’s not supposed to go this way.” 

Out of the corner of her eye, through the wash of tears, April can see Leo go still before his head drops down. Behind her, Donnie sighs. 

Splinter says, “Death can come upon us all untimely. You should all know this by now.” 

Donnie says, softly, “We’ve had close calls before, Sensei, but it’s not the same.” 

What they’ve lost before, they’ve usually been able to get back, with enough risk, enough hard work, enough sacrifice. This is different. This is just... over. April closes her eyes. Her mother’s been gone so long that her face is blur, and her voice is dim in April’s mind. It’s been too long since she looked at her old pics, to refresh her memory. She glances up, at Splinter, and thinks about the photo he keeps, the last relic of his old life. 

Her eyes are watering harder now, and her breath hitches in a sob. She feels the weight of Donnie’s hand on her shoulder, as he says, “April?” 

She spins around and flings her arms around him until she can bury her head on his shoulder. 

_The last thing April expected to see when she came down to the lair was a skinny girl she’d never seen before. “Hey,” said the girl. “I guess you must be April.”  
_

_“Uh, yeah,” April said, jolted by the unfamiliar presence. “Who the... who are you?”  
_

_Donnie came bolting out of his lab while the girl was still opening her mouth. “April! You’re here! Uh, I mean, hey, April. So you met Shepard, that’s cool, right?”  
_

_“Shepard?” April said, feeling like she’d missed something. She didn’t the feeling; it made her feel both stupid and irritable in turn.  
_

_The girl smiled, inexplicably cocky. Like April hadn’t had enough of cocky lately, what with hanging out with Casey. “That’s me.”  
_

_“Excuse us,” April said to the younger girl, and grabbed Donnie by the arm and hauled him a few feet away. “Who is she and what is she doing here?” she hissed.  
_

_Donnie blinked at her. “She’s, uh... we ran into her a couple of times while we were, um, while we were hunting for the mutagen.”  
_

_“Right,” said April through her teeth, not especially wanting to think about the mutagen spill right now. “That doesn’t explain why you let her come down to the lair!”  
_

_“She’s okay, April! She’s not going to tell anyone, and she’s helping me out some.” He smiled nervously.  
_

_“She’s helping you_ out _? In the lab? She’s a kid, Donnie!”  
_

_Donnie’s face creased in bewilderment, and Shepard said loudly, “I’m_ right here _, you know. And I’m not a kid! I’m thirteen!”  
_

_“Well, I thought you were twelve, but thirteen is so much better,” April snapped back, and hauled Donnie a little further away. He came without resistance, looking befuddled. “She’s a kid,” April said, trying to keep her voice low this time. “It’s too dangerous! She could tell on you, or she could get hurt, or kidnapped, or—” She stopped herself as Donnie stared at her, clenching her teeth together. She couldn’t tell what she was more mad about, honestly: was it that the girl might not be safe, or that the turtles might not be? “How could you possibly let another human get involved, after everything that happened?”  
_

_Donnie flinched, eyes downcast, and April felt a brief spark of regret. She buried it right away. She was right, she told herself. It was too dangerous. For everyone. They were just being careless. Again. Just like how the mutagen had gotten spilled in the first place. She scowled, and Donnie’s shoulders hunched, but his brow furrowed. “Casey’s hanging around, too,” he pointed out.  
_

_“That’s different. Casey can take care of himself.”  
_

_“So can I,” the Shepard girl called out. When April stole a look at her, she was scowling. April scowled back and turned pointedly to Donnie.  
_

_“Explain to me what you’re thinking, Donnie.”  
_

_“April,” he said, and now he was the one to pull her further away. “She doesn’t have anyone,” he said quietly. “She’s in foster care or something, but she spends a lot of time on the streets. Sensei said it was okay, April. We’re keeping an eye on her.”  
_

_April frowned and darted another look at the other girl. She was skinny and weedy, with a sharp little face and dark eyes, one of the reasons April had thought she was younger than thirteen. Her dark hair was cut short on one side and chin-length on the other. “Well,” she said sullenly. “If Sensei said.”  
_

_“She’s not staying here all the time,” Donnie said. “Just after school and stuff. He made her promise she’d go to school, and we’re supposed to check her homework. She wants to help, and we’re keeping her out of trouble.”  
_

_April crossed her arms and looked away. What, were they just going to adopt random kids of the street, now? “Until you get her_ into _trouble,” she muttered.  
_

_Donnie flinched again. “Yeah... well... we’re going to try really hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.”  
_

_April held her peace for then, but that wasn’t the end of it. Shepard kept hanging around. She wasn’t_ always _there when April came down to the lair, but she was there often enough. Sometimes she was playing games with Mikey, giggling over their game controllers. Sometimes she was diligently doing homework, often with her lower lip jutting out and a scowl on her face. There were rules, April gathered. No games until after homework. No hanging out with the turtles when she was supposed to be in school. Splinter laid down the rules and Shepard obeyed them. She had to, really, with the turtles enforcing them like a pack of big brothers. Sometimes it made April want to laugh.  
_

_Other times she came underground later in the day and would find Shepard hanging out in the lab with Donnie, asking questions and handing him supplies, and she had to fight down a jealous protective urge. Helping out Donnie was April’s thing. Or she’d find Shepard in the dojo with Raph or Leo or Mikey, or all three of them, bouncing around and trading punches and kicks. It wasn’t real training, she told herself, not like the training she’s resumed doing with Splinter, but it still bugged her, made her feel tense and sour. It was stupid. She was stupid to be jealous of a scrawny thirteen-year-old girl. She_ wasn’t _jealous_. _She just... didn’t like sharing, somehow. All along, the turtles had been her secret. They’d been something she could hold onto and think about when people were whispering about her and her missing dad at school. Now she wasn’t the only one in on the secret. And sure, Casey knew, too, but that was different. Casey had been her friend first, even if he’d found the turtles on his own. Shepard was something else again. She’d just run into them all by herself. Like Timothy, although April had to admit that Shepard had things more together than Timothy, to hear the boys tell it. She hadn’t needed rescuing, she hadn’t even screamed when she saw them, Leo said.  
_

_So maybe April wasn’t that special after all.  
_

_But she didn’t get to decide who the turtles were friends with, and Shepard kept on being there, so April got used to it. To her. They didn’t talk that much, but that was fine. They didn’t fight, either. Not that anyone would notice, the way the brothers themselves squabbled, or the way Donnie and Casey kept sniping at each other, or the way Casey and Raph got into a wrestling match every chance they could. April and Shepard just kept their distance, and that was just fine.  
_

_Looking back on it later, April couldn’t tell when her attitude had started to change, but she_ could _pinpoint the moment she’d_ realized _it. That was the night of the Rat King’s return. Shepard had begged to help while they were trying to herd the rats through the streets, and Leo, left in charge, had let her, if reluctantly. Shepard had been instructed to stay out of the fighting when they finally made it to the Rat King’s lair—and she did, keeping out of the way and out of sight—but when April started releasing the Rat King’s hostages, Shepard was suddenly there.  
_

_“It’ll go faster if I help you,” she said, simply, and April couldn’t argue with that, so she shrugged and nodded. She kept half an eye on the younger girl, feeling vaguely responsible for her while the turtles and Splinter were out of sight. Shepard was quick and unobtrusive, and very fast at the locks.  
_

_There wasn’t really a chance to talk while they were helping the dazed and frightened captives out of the Rat King’s lair, but later, as they headed back to meet up with the turtles, April decided she had to say something. “Thanks for helping out tonight,” she said. “You did a good job.”  
_

_Shepard gave her a wary glance, like she was expecting it to be a joke or something. “I’m not bad at locks,” she said. “Might as well use it for something good.”  
_

_“Might as well,” April agreed. “Anyway, thanks. It was a lot faster with both of us.”  
_

_Shepard blinked, and her shoulders relaxed a little. April hadn’t even realized she was tense, and felt a sudden guilty pang. She really hadn’t been making the younger girl feel very welcome, had she? Maybe it wasn’t her job to do that, but she still could have been nicer.  
_

_“Thanks, April,” Shepard said quietly, almost shyly. Like April’s opinion mattered to her.  
_

_“No problem,” April said._

She’d been wrong about Shepard for a long time, and unkind, and selfish. April regrets it now. Her tears feel hot as they squeeze out of her eyes and leave damp trails on her cheeks. Shepard doesn’t hold a grudge, she knows that. tThey’d become friends, in time, and closer as they got a little older and more secure in themselves. 

—or, rather, Shepard _didn’t_ hold a grudge. 

April chokes back a sob. Donnie’s arms tighten around her, solid and strong. She is, right now, in the safest, most comforting place in the world, and yet. Donnie’s right. They’ve had close calls before. Too many. It’s some kind of miracle they haven’t lost one of their own before now. 

That doesn’t make it any better, though.


	3. Chapter 3

Casey’s not _helping_ , precisely, because he doesn’t want his head bitten off, but he stays close as Raph shivers his way down the fire escape to the window of Casey’s apartment. It’s getting colder, and darker, and Raph had to be a dumbass and come out without his coat. Oh, Casey gets it. He gets how much the news sucks, because he’s feeling it too, and he also gets that Raph is shit at handling stuff like this. But then there’s the fact that the turtles don’t handle the cold well. He knows they’re not really cold-blooded any more. He’d asked once, and Donnie had had some huge long-winded explanation for that, but Casey had tuned it out halfway through. Something about the mutation, that was what he got out of it. Even so, anyone would get cold out here without a coat, and it seems to take longer for the turtles to warm back up again, mutant or not. It doesn’t even matter why, but it’s something that Casey lets occupy his mind as he and Raph head home. Something to think about that he can actually do something about. They’ll go home, he’ll get Raph inside and warmed up, and then they can deal with... whatever. 

Casey waits for Raph to go through the window first, and his omni-tool buzzes with an incoming message. It’s from Leo. Big surprise. Casey grimaces, and texts back right away, so Leo doesn’t work himself into a tizzy and send him another dozen messages. _Got him. Staying at my place for now_. Then he takes his turn to swing through the windowsill and slides the casing shut against the cold. It’s comfortable enough inside, though experience tells him Raph is gonna need more heat to warm up properly. 

“Was that Leo?” Raph asks, standing in the middle of the room. He crosses his arms, trying to pretend that he’s doing it to look intimidating and not because he’s chilled. 

Casey rolls his eyes, crosses to the couch, and tosses Raph the electric blanket they keep there. “Yeah.” 

“He needs to back off,” Raph grumbles, but he wraps up in the blanket without further comment. 

“Oh, yeah,” Casey says. “He’s _such an asshole_ , wanting to make sure you didn’t freeze your ass off out there. Man. What a jackass.” 

“I’m fine.” 

“Dude.” Casey yanks open a drawer, pulls out a couple of chemical heat packs, and tosses them in the direction of his thick-headed boyfriend. “Put these on, I can hear your knees creaking from here.” 

“I’m _fine_.” 

Casey turns around to see that Raph caught one of the heat packs and fumbled the other. Casey stares, raising one eyebrow pointedly. “Yeah, because you usually drop things when I throw them at you.” 

Raph scowls back. He grabs the dropped pack and drops onto the couch with a loud huff, retreating into his rapidly warming blanket cocoon. He keeps scowling at Casey under the shadow of the blanket corner that’s hanging over his head like a floppy hood. Casey has to fight the urge to snicker. Fine. He can be an ass if he wants, the important thing is to get his reptile body temperature back up where it belongs. He says, “So, you want some tea or something?” 

Raph grumbles something indecipherable. Casey rolls his eyes where Raph can’t see him. “Well, I want something hot to drink.” Without waiting for an answer, he goes to the kitchen and starts the kettle. He’s cold, too, coat and all; the day has the kind of damp chill that creeps into your bones and makes you feel down even if you didn’t already have something to feel crappy about. 

With the kettle heating, Casey pauses in the doorway between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment and looks at the blanket-wrapped lump on the couch. “You sure you don’t want anything?” he says, loud and deliberate. 

“Give it a rest,” Raph grumps, and a moment later, says, “Hot chocolate.” 

Casey smirks. “You got it.” He walks over to the couch. 

“I’m fine,” Raph mumbles again. 

“Didn’t think you weren’t.” Ruthlessly, Casey pulls the blanket aside. 

“Hey!” Raph clutches it. “What are you doing?” 

“ _I’m_ cold, scoot over.” 

Grumbling, Raph lets go of enough blanket for Casey to climb into the cocoon with him. He makes a point of snuggling in—yeah, he’s not ashamed to say it—even though he’s going to have to get up in a few to make the hot chocolate. It’s just nice, slinging an arm over Raph’s shoulders, leaning in and getting warm together. Nicer because they’re alone and Raph won’t scoot away or act twitchy (like any of his family cares at this point, but whatever), but actually leans back and lets his hand sit heavy on Casey’s thigh. 

_Casey had heard about the kid. There was some girl who’d spotted the turtles on a rooftop and offered to help them hunt for that mutagen stuff, and they kept going on about, Mikey especially. He didn’t expect her to be so skinny or sharp-faced, or to be glaring at them, totally not intimidated. “I thought you said you weren’t going to have any new human friends,” she said to Raph, her voice sharp and angry.  
_

_Casey flashed her his signature grin. “Casey Jones isn’t just anybody, you know.”  
_

_“Shut up,” she said without bothering to look at him. “C’mon, turtle, what gives? You were all ‘blah blah it’s too dangerous,’ and now you’re hanging out with this guy?”_

_“More like he’s hanging out with me,” Casey said, still grinning. It was just him and Raph for now, and it was kinda funny how mad the kid was. She was all squinty and stompy.  
_

_“First off, that was Leo who said that, not me,” Raph said.  
_

_“So it’s fine if I come along with you guys, then?”  
_

_Casey frowned at that; she seemed cool and all, but Raph was still a new friend and Casey wasn’t sure he wanted the girl hanging out with them, too. Besides, she was awfully scrawny.  
_

_“No!” Raph said.  
_

_Her eyes narrowed. “Well, why_ not _?”_

_Raph’s mouth opened, and then his face scrunched up and he glared. “... Because it’s too dangerous.”  
_

_Mistake. She pressed her lips together and glared right back, and uh-oh, her mouth was shaking and her eyes were suspiciously bright. Casey had a sister, and knew the signs. He gave it about thirty seconds before she started to cry.  
_

_“Look, don’t... don’t cry about it,” Raph said, looking panicked. Casey was going to remember that one to tease him about later.  
_

_The Shepard kid’s eyes widened. She took a step toward them and pointed a finger at Raph and snarled, “I’m not crying. You think I’m going to cry about you, you big green jerk? Well I’m_ not _.”  
_

_She spun on her heel and stormed off. They could hear her rattling the fire escape all the way down. Casey felt a little bad for her. She was pretty young, yeah, but she was pretty tough, too. He said, “Way to go, dude.”  
_

_“What?” Raph snapped, but his eyes shifted to the side, like he felt bad for her too. “Let’s go. We’ve got stuff to do.”_

In the kitchen, the kettle is starting to make that creaking sound that means it’s about to whistle. On the couch beside him, Raph shifts and mumbles, “It’s just bullshit.” 

“Yeah,” Casey sighs. Dying in some kind of stupid accident, out who knows where? Stupid. Not the way heroes are supposed to go. Or smart mean kids you watched grow up, either. 

# 

There’s going to be an official memorial service on the Citadel. 

The New York newscasters like to remind people that Shepard was a native New Yorker. They act perturbed, even indignant, that the Systems Alliance won’t be holding the service in the city. The service will be on the Citadel, aired in the city on big screens so people can attend if they want to. Even the newscasters have to acknowledge, though, that there’s no body, nothing to inter. It’s an uncomfortable fact that the media don’t quite know what to do with. There will be no honored resting place for humanity’s most recent hero. 

After all, there was no surviving family to insist on finding her body, or on having the service at home. 

Every time the news says “no surviving family,” Leo’s face goes stony, and Raph, if he’s within earshot, stalks silently away. The training dummy is starting to sag and leak; Donnie’s pretty sure it’s been getting extra workouts from all of them. He’s considered fabricating some evidence that April is a long-lost cousin of Shepard’s, or something, but there’s so little physical resemblance between the two women that even the attempt would be ludicrous. Besides that, none of them want the media to be looking too closely at April, or Casey, either. (And besides _that_ , if Donnie wanted to do such a thing, he should have been laying the groundwork a long time ago, because people will notice if Shepard’s family records suddenly change. Yes. He should have prepared for this a long time ago, but he hadn’t wanted to think about it, and so there it is.) 

Donnie is the one who keeps checking the news periodically. He can admit, to himself, at least, that’s it’s out of some sort of intellectual masochism. It’s fascinating and not a little disturbing to observe how the shining hero the newscasters keep talking about, “tragically cut down in her prime,” they say, already bears less and less resemblance to the person Donnie knows. Knew. He’s stopped putting the news reports on the main vidscreen, because they just upset the rest of the family, but he can’t help checking it now and then on his own private terminal in the lab. 

When the memorial is first announced, April says, thoughtful, “I could take some time off work. I have a few vacation days. No one needs to know why I’m taking them.” 

Casey makes a regretful face and shakes his head. “I can’t take time off right now.” 

“I don’t mind going alone,” April says. 

“If you want to,” Donnie says, spreading his hands. Since Raph and Casey came back Casey’s place, Casey is much the same as ever—maybe a little subdued—but Raph has been silent, jaw stuck out and eyes distant. It’s a quiet that Donnie hadn’t expected from him, and it makes him nervous. His other brothers are easier to handle. Mikey’s been moping around the lair, alternating between bouts of crying and lots of banging around in the kitchen. Leo looks tenser than usual, but he’s keeping most of his thoughts contained—typical Leo. Donnie gives Leo his space, and returns Mikey’s hugs, but he’s not sure how to approach Raph. 

But with Raph and Casey back home and April over too, they’ve all drifted into the living room. Donnie watches April, perched on the couch, slim and upright. She’s physically the smallest of them, and sometimes she looks it, but he forgets, sometimes, because her presence is enough to hold her own among them. Now, her eyes are reddened, but she’s not crying, and her voice is firm. So Donnie is cautious when he adds, “I don’t know if there’s any real reason to go, though. I mean, she’s not... she’s not there.” 

Funerals and memorials are for the living. Donnie knows this. But something about the ritual seems empty to him: all that ceremonial around an empty coffin, surrounded by people who might or might not have known her. 

A silence falls in the room, heavy and uncomfortable. Donnie shifts, too aware of the quiet buzzing of the lights and electronics around him, and half wishing he hadn’t said what he’d said. At least he doesn’t seem to have especially upset anyone, although Casey’s mouth pulls to the side and Raph’s scowl settles in. 

“Well, if you want to, April... “ Leo says. “I mean... what do you all think?” 

He’s looking from Raph to Mikey to Splinter. It’s not like Leo to be that uncertain. Donnie frowns slightly, wishing he had a bitter idea what his brother was thinking. 

“What’s the point?” Raph asks. It’s the first time he’s spoken since he got home. His voice is rough from disuse. Donnie crushes the impulse to ask if he’s okay. Raph hates hovering, and Donnie’s not eager to be the one who sets him off. 

On the other hand, that would be familiar, at least. They’re all used to Raph simmering and fuming and blowing up, in a storm of yelling or, occasionally, throwing things, and stalking off in a huff. But now... it’s obvious that Raph is upset, but Raph is also _quiet_ , not muttering under his breath or glaring at them. Donnie keeps bracing himself for Raph to go off, because that’s what Raph does, and it keeps not happening, even though he can see the tension in his brother’s muscles. 

Leo is looking at Raph, too, with narrowed eyes and a worried set to his mouth. He glances aside for a moment, and meets Donnie’s eyes, and Donnie feels a spark of recognition. Leo sees it, too; they’re on the same page here. But he doesn’t know what to do about it. If they’d lost a friend to the Foot, or any handy enemy, Donnie’s confident that Leo and Raph would be having an argument right now about appropriate kinds of vengeance and the need for a plan before attacking. But this? Shepard’s distant, frozen fate? 

None of them know how to respond to that. 

Raph goes on, sounding flat and tired. “They didn’t even find her. There’s nothing there for us.” 

The silence is back once he’s done talking, stiffer than before. Donnie watches Leo look back and forth between them all, trying to gauge reactions. 

But Mikey’s the one who speaks next. “One of us should go anyway. Someone should be there to remember the real her.” He pulls himself out of his hunch and looks up. His eyes are still a little watery, but his face is getting that look that means he’s not going to budge. This time, though, there’s no whining or complaining, and he sounds only calm and resolved when he says, “It’s the right thing to do.” 

April nods, and Donnie sighs. To his surprise, he finds himself relaxing, and everyone else seems to be, too. Raph shrugs and mutters, “Whatever,” but it’s a concession. They’re all going to give in when Mikey gets that look, and they know it. It’s even a relief to have someone cut through the confusion and offer some clarity. 

“Okay, then,” Leo says. “That’s settled.” 

“I’ll ask for the time off and make the travel arrangements,” April says. 

“Cool,” Casey says. “And we’re gonna have a wake.” 

“A wake?” Donnie asks. 

“I’m already awake,” Mikey mumbles. 

“Not that kind of awake, Mikey,” April says gently. 

“Yeah,” Casey says. “It’s more like... it’s like a memorial service, but not boring. But we gotta do something to remember her properly. Talk about her, tell stories, sing if we want to, get it all out.” 

Mikey perks up visibly. “Singing? That sounds pretty cool.” 

“Yeah. Just us.” Casey flashes his trademark crooked smile. “It’ll be great. I’ll bring the booze.” 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Casey is true to his word: he brings a lot of booze. 

The night of the wake could almost be an ordinary evening, with all of them gathered in the living room. What’s different is that the vidscreen is turned off, and there’s an atmosphere of strain that sets Donnie on edge. It’s been two days since they agreed to Casey’s plan, and the two days have been uncomfortable ones. Raph has barely come out of his room, and hasn’t said more than two words in a row to anyone in all that time. Donnie’s counted. 

Mikey seems to have decided that a wake requires vast quantities of food, so he’s spent most of his waking time in the kitchen, and that’s made him act a lot more like his usual self. He still has attacks of sniffles, and he’s also taken to giving all of his brothers stealth hug attacks. Donnie finds he doesn’t mind. He hardly ever minds Mikey’s hugs, as a general rule, unless he’s got something volatile or otherwise dangerous in his hands. But it’s especially nice now, when he finds himself scrolling through yet another batch of inconclusive news stories with stinging eyes, to have Mikey suddenly sling both arms around him from behind. 

The night of the wake, Donnie tidies up the lab and heads to the living room with the sheepish feeling that he’s late, even though nothing has started yet. Mikey’s sprawled on the couch, conveniently in reach of the trays of sandwiches he’s brought out, one foot tapping against the floor. Leo is sitting upright next to him like he’s waiting for enemies to burst out of the ceiling. Only Splinter is looking normal as Donnie takes his own favorite seat. He’s not sure what to say, so he waits in silence with the rest of them for the few minutes it takes Raph to emerge from his room. He drops into a solitary chair, casting a glare around impersonally and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. 

They’re still posed awkwardly that way when Casey comes breezing in, with April in tow. They’re both loaded down—between them, plenty of beer and several bottles of whiskey, and a couple bottles of sake, mostly for Splinter. Casey methodically passes a bottle of beer to each turtle. Donnie shrugs and opens his. 

“So how are we supposed to start?” he asks after a couple of minutes. 

Casey points at him, trying to look stern. “Drink more. Think less.” 

Donnie rolls his eyes, but obediently raises the bottle to his mouth. Satisfied, Casey nods. “I don’t know, we just talk.” 

April snorts. “Come on, Casey, this was your idea. You didn’t have a plan?” 

“Okay, you want an intro? Fine.” Casey clears his throat and raises his bottle. “We’re gathered tonight in the memory of Shepard, who hated her first name, so we just called her Shepard. She was our friend, and she left home to do awesome things, and we’re gonna miss her. Bottoms up.” They all drink, as instructed—Splinter from his sake cup instead of a beer bottle. Raph drinks last and does it with an eye-roll, though he doesn’t say anything. Casey simply ignores him. Donnie wishes he could manage to do the same. 

“I suppose that’s not a bad eulogy,” Leo says. 

“Do I look like some kind of minister to you?” Casey says. “The idea is, we’re all supposed to talk.” 

_“Hey.” Donnie looked up from the schematics he’d been studying—there had to be a way to give the Shellraiser better maneuverability without compromising the armor too much—and found Shepard idling in the doorway. “Got a minute?” she said.  
_

_“Sure.” He shoved the sketches away. “What’s up?”  
_

_“I—” She hesitated and bit her lip, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. He hadn’t seen her fidget like that for a long time. Donnie watched her for a moment, fascinated, wondering if she was going to break the silence herself.  
_

_When she didn’t, he decided to nudge her. “You decided to enlist, didn’t you?”  
_

_“Yeah,” she said, all her breath whooshing out. “It’s... yeah. I decided it was the right thing.”  
_

_He smiled at her, not surprised in the slightest. “Seems like it was always what you wanted.”  
_

_“I thought about it ever since I was little,” she said. Her hands tightened around the datapad she was holding. “I just... I don’t know. Thinking about leaving, I mean really going away— I wasn’t sure, then.”  
_

_“I can understand that,” Donnie said. He’d once entertained occasional fantasies of going off somewhere quiet, where he could be undisturbed for days. They were just fantasies, though. Contemplating leaving home for real—no. He couldn’t imagine it. His family was too much of his life, had been for too long. He wouldn’t know what to do with himself. Their human friends were another story. April and Casey might go away one day, but not yet, he told himself, and focused back on the girl in front of him. “If you can’t figure out the paperwork on your own, though, you should maybe rethink it.”  
_

_Shepard made a face and stuck out her tongue. “No. It’s not that. I need...” She wavered, fidgeting again._

_“You need?” Donnie prompted.  
_

_“I need a new name,” she said, almost shyly. Donnie puzzled over that one. Shepard was never shy, in his experience.  
_

_“What’s wrong with Shepard?”  
_

_“Not that name.” She finally came into the lab and perched in the lab’s other chair. “My first name.”  
_

_“Oh,” he said, as if he understood, and realized he could barely remember what Shepard’s first name actually was. She’d insisted on Shepard from the first, and that had been close to five years ago now.  
_

_“My mom named me Jane,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “It’s... whatever, it’s probably a great name for some people. It’s not for me. And then my mom ditched me and never came back, so, you know, I don’t care very much about what she thought I should be called.”  
_

_“Okay,” said Donnie. “What do you want your name to be? And shouldn’t you be looking for Mikey, if you need ideas?”  
_

_She laughed, and then bit her lip as her eyes dropped to the datapad on her lap.  
_

_“Seriously, he’s going to be really mad if I get to name you.” Donnie tried to picture Mikey’s reaction. There was going to be pouting for days. Weeks.  
_

_“There was actually a name I was thinking about,” she said in a rush. She flicked on the datapad and held it out to him.  
_

_Donnie took it, still puzzled, and took a moment to page through the images and documents in front of him. He looked up. “Artemisia Gentileschi?”  
_

_“I mean, just the first name,” she said. “Because... well, she seems pretty kickass.”  
_

_“Her work is powerful,” he said, looking back over the images included in the file.  
_

_“Yes,” said Shepard eagerly, before hesitating again. “And also, she’s, um...”  
_

_Donnie looked at her quizzically.  
_

_She squirmed in the chair and sighed. “Okay, I know it’s weird, but she was a Renaissance painter—well, sort of late Renaissance, I guess—and, um, you guys are way more like my family than my mom ever was, so—”  
_

_Donnie stared at her for another moment before the pieces clicked into place. “Shepard, are you asking permission to name yourself after a painter?”  
_

_Her cheeks were starting to darken. “I, um... look, I can think of something else—”  
_

_He reached out and put a hand on her arm before she could flee. “Of course you can. You know you’re like family to us, too. You could name yourself anything you want. It wouldn’t change that.”  
_

_“I don’t want to forget where I came from,” she said quietly. She sounded determined, but she bit her lip when she looked up at him again. “Are you sure it’s okay?”  
_

_“Positive,” Donnie said. He could have asked Splinter, or called his brothers in, but there was no doubt in his mind. He tugged on her arm and gave her a quick hug.  
_

_She was smiling, relieved, when he let her go. “Okay. Cool. Um... also, I don’t really have the credits to file an official name change form, so I was wondering if you could just take care of it.”  
_

_“Oh! Sure.”  
_

_It wasn’t difficult at all to hack into the government database and falsify the appropriate paperwork. They really should have better security on that sort of thing. Shepard stayed in the chair and watched over his shoulder, probably making notes on his hacking techniques. “There you go,” Donnie said finally. “All set. One totally legal and official name change, right there.”  
_

_“Great,” Shepard said. “That... wow. That actually feels good.” She shook her head. “Probably no one will ever call me that, but I was really ready not to be Jane, I think.”  
_

_“Well, congratulations, Artemisia.”  
_

_She grinned. “We can stick with Shepard.” She looked down, and, after a moment, looked up through her hair. “Going away like this... I really don’t want to let you guys down.”  
_

_“Shepard, you could never do that,” he said._

_Her forehead creased. “I don’t want to change too much or forget what’s important to me, or...”  
_

_“You won’t,” he said, and she fell silent. “You’re going to go out and see the galaxy, and it’s going to be great, Shepard.”  
_

_Her smile wavered a little around the corners. “Thanks.”  
_

Donnie’s mouth is dry when he finishes talking. He takes a drink of his beer. April, sitting next to him, leans against his shoulder with a sigh. Raph is still scowling, this time at the floor, but Leo and Splinter look a little misty-eyed. 

Casey raises his own bottle. “Perfect. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Who’s next?” 

Mikey’s hand shoots up. “Ooh! Me! Me!” 

 

_His brothers were arguing again, and searching for mutagen was boring anyway. Mikey sighed and looked around, letting them go at it. There was a pigeon sitting on the edge of the roof, but pigeons didn’t like Mikey the way they did Raph, so he left it alone. It was boring up here in general, right now. He’d much rather be moving, and maybe they could just get a move on as soon as his bros stopped arguing about “optimable search strategies” or whatever Donnie had just said. Mikey started humming to himself, trying to ignore the argument.  
_

_“Hey!” said an unfamiliar voice, a girl’s voice. Before Mikey could call to his bros and disappear, like they were supposed to, she stuck her head over the fire escape and said, “Wait! Don’t go anywhere! Just hold on a second!” as she hauled herself onto the rooftop.  
_

_It was that girl they’d seen the other night, the skinny girl with the dark eyes. She’d been hanging out on a rooftop, which, who did that except for them? And, like, the Foot ninja. And sometimes mutants and Kraang. But besides that. And she’d gasped when she’d seen them, but she hadn’t screamed, and when Leo hissed at her “We were never here” she’d just nodded.  
_

_But now she was up on the roof with them again, taking off a backpack that was stuffed full of something, and saying, “Hey, I’ve been looking for you guys everywhere.”  
_

_“Hey, guys,” Mikey said. He waited for a moment and then repeated “Guys?” a little louder before they noticed her.  
_

_“You were supposed to forget you’d seen us,” Leo said, all bossy-like. Raph scowled at him and then back at the girl. Great. Guess they weren’t done fighting yet, even if they agreed on this one.  
_

_The girl ignored what Leo had said, though. “So I overheard you guys the other night. Is this the stuff you’re looking for?” She opened up the backpack and hauled out a pair of mutagen canisters that looked huge in her thin arms and shone their weird greenish-blue light all over her face.  
_

_Donnie yelped and stared at her. All his brothers were staring at her, actually. Leo had a look on his face like that night Mikey had accidentally recorded over his Space Heroes episodes.  
_

_Mikey thought it was great. “All right!” he crowed. “You found some! That’s less work for us. Good job, uh—”  
_

_“Shepard,” she said. “My name’s Shepard.”  
_

_“That’s cool,” Mikey said. Maybe she had sheep! Maybe she’d let him see them and they’d be cute and fluffy. “Where do you keep sheep in the city, though?”  
_

_She blinked at him, and Donnie and Raph both groaned. “It’s just a name, Mikey,” Donnie said. “It doesn’t mean she has actual sheep.”  
_

_“Dumbass,” Raph added.  
_

_Mikey frowned. It wasn’t his fault her name was a regular word. “Well, that’s weird. Why would you have a name that didn’t really mean anything?”  
_

_All of his brothers groaned some more and rolled their eyes. Mikey stuck his lower lip out and glared at them. “That’s not the point right now,” Donnie said, sheathing his bo and reaching out for the canisters. “The point is, where did you find those? They’re dangerous and you have to be careful with them!” He stopped himself and added, like he’d just thought of it, “Were there any more?”  
_

_Shepard rolled her eyes, too, as she let him take the canisters. “Duh. It’s glowy crap that fell from the sky, I figured it was dangerous.” She smiled. “I only found those two, but I can keep looking if you want!”  
_

_“No way,” Raph snapped, just as Leo said, “Absolutely not!” and the two of them looked at each other uncomfortably.  
_

_Shepard’s shoulders slumped, but her face screwed up in a scowl. Mikey felt bad for her. “Aww,” he said. “She can help, can’t she? I mean, we need a new human friend since April’s not talking to us.”  
_

_Whoops. Mikey instantly felt guilty, because now Donnie’s shoulders drooped, even though he was still clutching the canisters, and he got one of those sad looks. Mikey honestly hadn’t meant to made him look like that again!  
_

_Leo was so busy glaring at Mikey that Raph started talking instead. “You can’t just collect humans like stray kittens, Mikey. April was different. We don’t know this girl at all.”  
_

_“I’m right here,” she said. “And you’re welcome, by the way, not that you bothered to say thanks.”  
_

_Mikey tried to look on the bright side. “Does that mean I can have a kitten?”  
_

_“No. We’re not going to collect stray kittens_ or _humans,” Leo said. “Look, Shepard, we’re grateful for the help, but this stuff really is very, very dangerous. So you should leave it to us, and uh—” He fumbled for a moment, maybe because the girl was looking madder and madder. “—um—go home and do your homework or something?”  
_

_Shepard wrinkled her nose, still glaring at him. “You’re not the boss of me,” she said.  
_

_Raph laughed out loud. “She’s got you there, Leo.”  
_

_Leo’s eyes narrowed. “Whose side are you on?” he hissed at Raph. Raph just shrugged and smirked at him.  
_

_“Look,” said Shepard in a rush. “I can help, I’m not afraid, and I’ll be careful. I promise! I can look around in the daytime and if you tell me how to get in touch with you guys, I’ll tell you where to find them!”  
_

_That sounded pretty good to Mikey. He looked hopefully at his brothers. Raph was frowning again, but Leo looked like he was thinking about it.  
_

_But Donnie said, “That’s really not a good idea. When humans try to hang out with us, it just—it doesn’t end well. For them.” He was looking sad again, and oh, man, Mikey was going to have to make sure to give him the biggest hug when they got home and he wasn’t carrying mutagen any more.  
_

_Shepard stuck her chin out, though. “Is that a threat?”  
_

_Donnie’s eyes widened. “What? No! It’s just the truth!”  
_

_Leo was nodding, now, and he had that look that meant he was done thinking things over. “Our lives are dangerous. It’s better you go back to your own life.”  
_

_She opened her mouth to answer back, her eyebrows pulling together, and then she just sighed, and her shoulders dropped. “Fine. Whatever. Have fun with your stupid glowy crap.”_

“Wait, that’s what happened?” Casey says. “No one ever told me the whole story. Dude, you guys were harsh.” 

“We had reasons,” Donnie points out, though he looks regretful. April leans on him a little more, curling up a little so she can put her head on his shoulder. Donnie looks faintly surprised, but doesn’t move away. 

“She didn’t give up, though,” Leo says, and he’s smiling and settling in, kinda relaxing, so Mikey does a victory dance in his head. Casey was right, this wake thing is a _fantastic_ idea. 

Until Raph opens his big mouth and cuts Leo off, and everybody tenses up again.


	5. Chapter 5

“What are we even doing here?” Raph bursts out. 

Leo’s not even surprised. Deep inside him, his own ire wants to rise, but even that’s a struggle. It has to push through a fatigue that feels miles deep. 

“I mean, this is just talk,” Raph says. His voice is taking on that slightly higher pitch it gets when Raph is covering something else up with anger. “Going on and on and telling stories— it doesn’t change the fact that Shepard’s _dead_ , that something stupid happened and she’s just gone, and that’s... that’s just stupid and screwed-up. Her ship just got shot out of the sky, and that’s _bullshit_ , and I don’t see why we’re just sitting around here talking about it like— like—” 

Leo sighs. He doesn’t even try to hold it back, even though Raph immediately glares at him for it. It’s just—this is so typical. Raph complains about how nobody understands him, but the truth is he just wants to have everything his own way. If Raph doesn’t see the use in doing a thing, nobody else should do it either. But they aren’t kids any more. They’re supposed to be past crap like this now. Raph could, just once, have a tiny bit of consideration for other people and what they want, or how they feel. This was Casey’s idea, and the rest of them obviously want to do it—Mikey’s into it, and Donnie looks a lot more relaxed now, and so does April—so Raph could just shut up and go along with it, the way Leo’s doing. But no, Raph doesn’t like it, and so he has to let them all know and ruin it for everybody else. They’ve been tiptoeing around Raph for days, just waiting for him to blow. Doesn’t Raph get _tired_ of being this way? Because Leo is sure as hell tired of it. Sometimes he feels like he knows what Raph’s going to say before he says it. Not all the time, but when Raph’s in this kind of mood, self-centered and obstructionist, Leo knows exactly what he’ll say. Leo should have put a stop to this earlier, before the wake even happened; he should have told Raph to stop sulking like a child and— 

Leo knows this anger, too. Not Raph’s: his own. That corrosive tide of frustration that rises to meet Raph’s until they clash like a chemical reaction, the one that’s put them into too many pitched arguments over the years. 

Tonight it burns in his gut, but low. He feels too heavy for it, too tired to have another variation on this same argument. They’ve gotten older, and wiser. They’re better than this now. They’ve lost a friend, damn it—they knew Shepard when she was just a kid, and they watched her become the galaxy’s hero, watched her get the adulation she deserved and they’d never get a whiff of, and now she’s gone, and all they’re doing is trying to honor that. Why can’t Raph see that? 

When Leo looks at Raph, his anger fades a little, because he can see that his brother’s struggling. His slumped posture, the way his hands curl and uncurl into fists—even his mask is crumpled, and slightly blotchy. Raph probably can’t help being the way he is—like Donnie sometimes says, it’s not like they can go see a therapist—so it falls to Leo to find some way to snap him out of it. 

The only problem with that is, he’s got nothing. His frustration might be dying down, but nothing inspirational comes in to take its place, only the heavy fog of fatigue and grief. He’s got to say something, but anything he might say could set Raph off even more, and then they’ll truly spoil the evening for everyone else. How many times has he done that, only to mull over his words in meditation later and feel ashamed of himself, frustrated that he didn’t have better control of his temper, or enough wisdom to find something better to say. 

This moment is passing, with Raph slumped in his seat and still groping for words, and everyone else getting a little tenser, and Leo still doesn’t know what to say. 

Splinter’s the one who speaks, and it’s such a relief that half of Leo’s tension flees. He doesn’t have to be the one to find the words, not right now. 

“It does matter what we do here,” Splinter says, calm and even. “It matters how we remember. We are the only ones who can remember Shepard fully. We know who she was as a young girl, and we know who she was as a grown woman. This is so because she kept faith with us. She kept our trust no matter what it cost her in the life she led away from here. For that, we owe her much gratitude.” 

Leo swallows, his eyes dropping to the floor. It was true; they’d never even asked, not outright, but Shepard must have had to mask the truth in all sorts of ways. 

Splinter continues: “The rest of the world knew the hero, the commander, but we were fortunate enough to know her fully, to see her change and grow. So it matters, that we remember. But we do not only remember for her, but for ourselves. Death comes to us all, in time,” he says, looking around the room to meet each gaze, to be sure that each of them have taken his meaning. “This is a truth we know. One day, each of us will meet an end. We have been...” he pauses for a moment, “... very fortunate not to have suffered so keen a loss before now.” 

That’s also true. Leo sees Raph lower his head. Some of them have already lost so much—April’s mother died when she was young, and Sensei lost his whole family and clan. It’s the rest of them who’ve been lucky. For himself, if he thinks back over all the close calls they’ve had, he runs out of fingers before he gets back more than a couple of years. Hell, it’s a miracle they all made it past twenty. 

He doesn’t like thinking about it. It’s a necessity, sometimes, to plan, to review missions, to correct mistakes so they’ll do better next time. He’d still prefer not to think too much about the sight and smell of his brothers’ blood, or the fact that he knows exactly how each of them ways, because they’ve all had to carry each other home at least once. Still less does he want to think about the things they really can’t control—like how Splinter’s more stooped than he used to be, and there’s more gray in his fur, and he’s had a harder time shaking off the usual winter colds in the last few years. 

“And it is important, in the face of death, that we remember life,” Splinter says. “That we remember the good times and the bad, the whole person, and that we store up these memories for ourselves. That is why we are here to tell these old stories, and remember.” 

When he finishes, the room falls quiet. Leo exhales. The tension may have lifted, though Raph still sits with his shoulders hunched. “It just... it still sucks.” 

Splinter chuckles, gently. “It certainly does, my son.” 

“I mean, if she hadn’t left in the first place...” Raph trails off. 

Leo frowns. “What, when she was eighteen?” 

Raph shrugs, a stiff, jerky movement. “She wouldn’t have been out there now.” 

“That doesn’t mean she would have been safe,” Casey says. “She could have had a skycar accident or... or anything.” 

Or she could have fallen in one of their fights, even though Casey isn’t saying it. It might have been better for _them_ , Leo thinks, because they would have been there, been able to help her, or... but then again, maybe not. 

“She’d always been planning to enlist, though,” Donnie points out. “I mean, she asked what we thought back then, but I don’t think anything any of us said would have convinced her to stay.” 

Raph shrugs again, somehow sinking further into his chair. 

“Besides,” Mikey says, “if she hadn’t gone, then she wouldn’t have done all the awesome stuff she did, and nobody else would know how cool she was, and we’d probably be fighting those giant metal squid things right now.” 

Leo flinches at that. Donnie gets a thoughtful look, eyes distant and a little narrowed. April closes her eyes, her brow furrowing, and Casey’s mouth draws tight. 

They know enough. Shepard told them—not really enough to _know_ how bad it would be, but enough to _guess_. It’ll be bad. What she did on the Citadel bought them time, but they’re having to hope it’s enough. 

“I guess you’re right about that,” Raph mutters. 

“Dude, I’m right so much of the time! Like right now—” Mikey slides out of his own seat and springs across the room to flop on top of Raph in a hug. “—I am totally right that you need a hug!” 

Leo has to bite back a smile as Raph grunts in protest. “Get off me,” he grumbles eventually, but with a lot less heat than normal. 

Mikey’s smiling when he releases him. “That’s just a first installment, dude. You got a lot more hugs coming your way.” 

“I can hardly wait,” Raph says, but the line of his shoulders has softened, and he’s willing to meet their eyes again. Casey stands up to get himself another beer. When he sits down again, he sits in front of Raph’s chair and leans against Raph’s leg. He’s not even particularly bothering to be subtle about it this time. Leo smiles again, and turns away to find Mikey looking at him expectantly. 

“Your turn, Leo,” he says. 

“What?” he says stupidly. 

“For a story,” Mikey says. 

“Why is it my turn?” 

“Donnie told a story and so did I,” Mikey replies with a grin. “So it’s your turn.” 

Leo is not at all sure how Mikey suddenly came to be in charge of this wake, but he might as well go with it, if it makes Mikey happy. 

_The third time Leo ever saw Shepard, he and his brothers and Casey were on the way to Donnie’s favorite junkyard in search of salvage. They were keeping an eye out for lost mutagen on the way, of course, but the main mission was salvage. It was nice and low-risk, a way to get used to Casey being with them, and if he and Raph and Mikey were being a little noisy as they went, well—it was late and there wasn’t usually anyone near the junkyard at this hour. Donnie had grumbled a little about Casey coming along. He’d even offered to go by himself, but Leo wasn’t too inclined to let any of his brothers out of his sight after what had happened with Slash. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to say so, because Raph had just about jumped down Donnie’s throat at the suggestion.  
_

_Donnie was fiddling with his mutagen tracker as they ran, and waved at Leo to indicate he was picking up a signal and they should change direction, which is how they found Shepard lugging yet another mutagen canister down a dark alley. They didn’t jump right down into the alley to follow her, of course; they were lined up on the rooftop watching the figure haul the canister—which wouldn’t have been difficult, except that she seemed to be limping—and Leo was about to slide down quietly into the shadows.  
_

_“Hey,” whispered Casey, “isn’t that that girl?”  
_

_“I think you’re right,” Raph returned.  
_

_They were talking quietly, at least, much to Leo’s relief, but then:  
_

_“Hey, cool!” Mikey said brightly, and not particularly quietly. “We can say hi!”  
_

_“Mikey, wait!” Leo whispered urgently, trying to forestall Mikey’s attempt to jump down from the rooftop.  
_

_Mikey turned to him with a baffled stare. “What? Dude, she’s seen us before.”  
_

_He had a point.  
_

_“And now she hears us,” Donnie added, still peering down into the alley. Leo grimaced. He hadn’t thought they’d made_ that _much noise, but sure enough, the girl’s voice floated up from below.  
_

_“Who’s there?”  
_

_There wasn’t much point in hiding any more, and besides, Mikey was already plunging down toward the street. Leo sighed and followed.  
_

_Shepard was stiff and wary, but she actually relaxed when they stepped out of the shadows. “Oh. It’s you. Great. You can take this batch of glowy crap, too, then. What are you doing with it, anyway?”  
_

_“Keeping it safe,” Donnie said, stepping forward to take it out of her hands. “I thought we told you to stay away from it.”  
_

_“I wasn’t looking for it,” she said defensively. “I just saw it while I was taking a shortcut and I thought I should keep it away from anyone else if it’s soooo_ dangerous _.” Her voice slipped into sarcasm on the last word.  
_

_Leo was more focused on the way she moved, though. In the dark, it was hard to make out the details, but she_ was _limping, still moving a little stiffly, and he thought he saw a couple of bruises.  
_

_She didn’t belong to them, she wasn’t his responsibility... but she was trying to help, so he did feel a little responsible for her. “Are you all right?”  
_

_She stiffened and then shrugged. “It’s no big deal. There were just some rats sniffing around the canister, and I was kind of hard to get it away from them.”  
_

_Donnie let out a wordless exclamation and shoved the mutagen container at Leo, moving in for a closer examination of Shepard. “Are you okay? Did they bite you? City rats can carry rabies, so you should get it checked—”  
_

_“I know that,” she snapped. “I had all my shots, it’s okay.”  
_

_“That’s not how rabies treatment works,” he said, with barely veiled impatience.  
_

_“Well, I didn’t get bitten, I just ran into a trash bin while I was running away from them.”  
_

_“How many rats are we talking about here?” asked Casey nervously, shifting his hockey stick.  
_

_“A bunch.” Shepard sounded bored, but at least she’d stopped shoving Donnie away. “I don’t know, eight or ten?”  
_

_“And they were trying to get at the mutagen?” Donnie asked.  
_

_“I guess,” she said. “Is that what it is? What does it do?”  
_

_“It makes people into hideous monsters like Mikey here,” Raph said.  
_

_“Hey!”  
_

_“So don’t touch it.”  
_

_She heaved an exasperated sigh. “You guys have said that like fifty times. I get it, already. Don’t touch the glowy stuff. Besides, I told you I figured that out on my own. You think I’m dumb enough to play with weird glowing stuff just for kicks?”  
_

_There wasn’t a good answer to that one, Leo found. Mikey was nodding sympathetically. “I know how you feel. They always act like I’m dumb enough to do that, too.”  
_

_“Because you are,” Raph muttered.  
_

_Mikey wasn’t the one who had let his pet get into the mutagen, though, but there was no way Leo was about to bring that up just now.  
_

_Shepard had started to smile, but then she seemed to collect herself and her face fell back into a frown. “Anyway, I’m fine, and you have your mutagen or whatever, and you obviously don’t want me around, so— see ya, I guess.” She turned to go, and in the slanted light from the streetlights, Leo got a clear view of the bruise darkening her cheek.  
_

_“Did you get that running away from the rats, too?” he asked before thinking.  
_

_She stopped, frozen in place. “Um. Nah, but it’s not a big deal.”  
_

_“What, you get punched a lot?” Casey said. “Sports? Fights? What?”  
_

_“Yeah, well, maybe I threw the first punch,” she said. “Did you ever think of that? I told you, it’s no biggie. I got in a little scrap with my foster brother, that’s all.”  
_

_Donnie shot Leo an anxious look. Glancing around, Leo could see that everyone was frowning, including Casey, who said, “That’s not cool. Me and my sister roughhouse sometimes, but I wouldn’t do that to her.”  
_

_“Good for you,” Shepard said. “You’re a prince. Look, I can handle it.”  
_

_“Does that happen a lot?” Leo asked.  
_

_“And what are you doing out so late, anyway?” Raph wanted to know.  
_

_Shepard turned to face them with her arms folded across her chest. “Why do you guys care all of a sudden?”  
_

_Might still be safer than wherever she lived, Leo thought, exchanging uncomfortable looks with Donnie and Raph. He tried to put on a friendly smile. “Listen, we’re sorry about before.”  
_

_“Uh-huh,” she said, obviously not convinced. “I thought hanging out with you was too dangerous for little old humans like me. What, that’s different because you feel sorry for me now? Fuck off.” She started to turn away again.  
_

_“Wait,” Donnie said. “I have a question.”  
_

_She glanced back over her shoulder. “Okay...”  
_

_“When you saw us the first time, you didn’t scream, or run away, or... or anything. Why?” Donnie asked.  
_

_She shrugged. “I dunno. You guys seemed cool. Cooler than anyone else I know, I mean. And I thought maybe I could help out, ‘cause my foster parents aren’t too picky about when I come or go, but—you know what, whatever. I don’t need you guys to feel sorry for me. I can take care of myself. So I’ve got a couple of bruises, big deal. My foster brother’s got worse.”  
_

_“It’s not that,” Donnie protested. “It’s just...” he trailed off, unconvincingly.  
_

_“Who said anything about feeling sorry for you?” Casey put in. “You seem pretty awesome from where I’m standing, Shepard.”  
_

_She blew out a sigh. “I’m not some charity case. It’s just... you hear weird stories in some neighborhoods, you know? And I saw those glowing cans, but there’s nothing about them anywhere official, and that’s weird, too. So... I thought maybe you guys were doing something important and I wanted to help. That’s all.”  
_

_They exchanged glances again as she started to walk toward the street.  
_

_“If you want to help, you could come to the junkyard with us!” Mikey called out. “We’re gonna dig out all kinds of cool stuff.”  
_

_She gave them a wary look over her shoulder before she shrugged and said, “Okay.”_

_They hadn’t taken her right down to the lair that night, just to the junkyard. But she did okay—she helped haul stuff, she didn’t complain, and hell, she followed orders better than most of the rest of the team. So they let her come on the next salvage trip a couple of weeks later, and in the meantime Casey checked out her school, and eventually they’d asked Sensei if she could come for a visit.  
_

“Time for another round,” Casey says as Leo finishes. 

“And the sandwiches!” Mikey blurts out, bolting toward the kitchen. Leo smiles. Mikey’s probably right that it’s time for some food. 

And most importantly, everyone looks... better. Postures have relaxed, no one is quite so tense, so Casey was right, too: this was a good idea.


	6. Chapter 6

There’s something about the death of a friend that makes you consider your life choices. Or, at least, it’s making April consider hers. 

The mood has lightened, maybe eased by the amount of beer everyone’s been drinking. Mikey started telling another story about Shepard, and got to laughing so hard partway through that he never finished it. The somber mood couldn’t last after that. Everyone started telling funnier stories—silly things that they’d done when they were teenagers, odds and ends that had them all laughing again. Even Raph had relaxed enough to chuckle with the rest of them. Splinter had quietly disappeared at some point, maybe when Mikey had jumped up to perform an elaborate pantomime, or possibly when Casey suggested breaking out the video games. 

April can’t quite shake the current of melancholy that lies beneath the giddiness, though. She laughs in all the right places, but she draws up her feet onto the cushion and curls into her seat, letting everyone else’s words wash over her. She excuses herself after a while and pads away to the bathroom, to keep herself from projecting her pensive mood on the rest of them. 

April has made a lot of choices in her life. When she was sixteen, reeling in shock from seeing her father mutated, she had screamed at her best friends and told them she never wanted to see them again. She’d taken a certain spiteful satisfaction from the devastation on their faces—on _Donnie’s_ face—from the fact that she’d caused hurt to match the hurt she felt. That was a choice. She’d held onto that anger for weeks, trying to keep her heart hard even as her mind cleared, even though she couldn’t stand by forever, knowing there was a secret war taking place in the shadows. 

She’d gone back to find herself forgiven—so easily, more easily than she’d forgiven either them or herself. The turtles were so willing, so eager to extend their friendship and protection to anyone willing to meet them on the same ground. To her and her father, to Casey. To Shepard. 

Shepard had chosen to go and April had chosen to stay, when they were put to it. Shepard, at eighteen, had enlisted to see the galaxy, and April had been glad for her. Somehow that had seemed safer than staying in New York to deal with the endless stream of conflict and strangeness that their lives had been. Shepard was away from all that, and she was the youngest of them. She was never supposed to die first. 

April wraps her arms around herself. The bathroom is always a little cold, no matter how Donnie rigs the heating system. It’s stupid, to stay here in this chilly concrete bathroom, away from the warmth and laughter of the rest of her friends. Her family. 

Unlike Shepard, she’d chosen to stay, but looking back on it now, all April can think about is how long she’d chased after a normal life. She’d gone to high school like there was nothing strange under the surface of her life. She’d dated Casey, and insisted he take her to high school dances, like they were normal teenagers. She’d gone to college like any other bright eighteen-year-old. She’d stayed in the city for college and grad school, too, and she’d trained, taking pride in her growing skills, but she’d always kept one foot in the shadows and one in the light. She’d dated other guys—relationships that flared up and burned out like candle flames—but she’d never trusted any of them enough to share the whole of her life with them. Instead, she’d reveled in her secrets, even when they became the justification for a break-up. 

_“You know what your problem is, Red?” Casey had said, after she came over to his place to bemoan the latest crashed relationship.  
_

_April opened another beer and squinted at Casey across his crowded, messy living room. “No, Case, why don’t you tell me what my problem is?”  
_

_“Your problem is, you’re too worried about having a normal life. I mean, come on, you’re being trained by a secret ninja master, and half of your friends are mutants, and you get to have adventures and save the world and shit! And you keep going for these boring dudes who would totally want you to move to the suburbs or something. Your life is awesome, April, why would you want it to be ordinary?”  
_

_She’d had no answer for him, as she thought about the romance gossip swirling around among her college friends, and then thought about nights spent on the rooftops with a weapon in her hand.  
_

She envies Casey, to tell the truth. He makes it look so easy. Casey does his job and coaches youth hockey, and at night he puts on a hockey mask and roams the streets, and he and Raph are like two halves of a whole. It works, even though Raph is also one-fourth of another whole. Casey knows who he is and where he wants to be, and it seems like he’s always known. His life fits together, even the weird parts. Shepard knew where she wanted to be, too, even though it took her a little longer to figure out. 

But April—April’s struggled. She could say it’s because of her empathy, of what was done to her as a child—that she’s always so aware of other people’s feelings that she can’t always be sure of her own mind. But that’s a cop-out. She’s made choices, but she’s never managed to fit the parts of her life together. She chose to go for an advanced degree, and she chose to stay in the city to do it. She thought she was balancing things out by training and patrolling as much as she could, even though the life of a scientific researcher only allowed so much time. It took going away to London, finally trying to commit herself to the professional career she’d thought she wanted, to realize just how fragile that balance was. 

_April watched Shepard flex her injured shoulder. She could catch the thin thread of pain from the younger woman, but it didn’t seem to be troubling Shepard too much. Her dark eyes were steady and thoughtful as she focused on April, saying, “But it’s already complicated, isn’t it? If you’re even thinking about how to do it?”  
_

_April sighed and slumped in her chair. “Yeah. But I need to be sure.” It just figured that Shepard would see right through her. That, even if they hadn’t spoken face to face in far too long, Shepard would see, almost at once, the realization April was still carrying around like an fragile, valuable piece of tech she hadn’t figured out how to carry safely yet.  
_

_Shepard shook her head, one side of her mouth curling out into a smile. “I used to watch you guys together and wonder when you were going to figure it out. You were just disgusting together even if it was totally platonic.”  
_

_April smiled at the judgment, a little wistful. What if she had figured it out years ago? What if she hadn’t been so focused on thinking of her life as two parts? If she’d gone away for graduate school, would she have realized sooner just how much she loved Donnie? “That was a long time ago,” April said.  
_

_Shepard leaned forward, her eyes serious, like she’s trying to make April do something through sheer force of will. “Just... make a move, April. Be stupidly happy together and make science.” She shivered, a brief frown crossing her face, and April could feel the echo of alien screams flickering through Shepard’s mind.  
_

_She put on a smile of her own, so that Shepard wouldn’t worry. “You’re awfully confident it’ll work.”  
_

That had been the last time she’d talked to Shepard. Shepard had had to leave right after, and April had waited—is still waiting—for the right moment to talk to Donnie. It hadn’t seemed necessary to do it before Christmas, but the holidays are over now, and here she is. 

Shepard probably thought she had plenty of time, too. 

April stands, rubbing at her arms, her backside aching from sitting on the closed toilet seat too long. Leaving the bathroom, she hears a burst of laughter from the living room, and the sound of video game explosions. She turns her steps to the kitchen instead. 

Donnie’s there, of course, cutting up cheese from the fridge. Since April came back, it’s seemed like she has some kind of Donnie-radar, beyond her usual empathy. She’s aware of him all the time. As she goes through her own work day, she’ll find herself idly thinking about where he’s likely to be, and what he might be doing. Now, without even thinking about it, she knows where to find him. She knows he’ll be ready for a snack, as well as a moment of quiet. 

“Hey,” she says, coming into the room and leaning one hip against the counter beside him. 

“Hey,” Donnie replies. “Cheese?” 

“Sure.” She takes the offered square of cheese and eats it, letting the sharp, slightly salty flavor fill her mouth. Donnie eats some, too, and then offers her another bottle of beer, taking one for himself. 

April accepts, silently. Donnie turns, leaning his shell against the battered edge of the counter. She twists so that they’re side by side, looking out at the others as Mikey and Raph play a racing game, and pops the top off her bottle. 

“I never thought Shepard would be the first of us to die,” Donnie says, echoing her own thoughts of a few minutes ago. 

April smiles, because she’s not surprised that they’ve been thinking the same thing. It feels strange, though, so she hides her smile behind a swallow. “Who did you think would be first?” 

“Raph,” he says immediately. “He’s the most reckless. Or Casey, or both of them together.” 

April snorts. “Like the rest of you aren’t.” 

“Not the same way,” Donnie says. “Or Leo, because he puts himself in the way too much.” 

She glances at him sideways. He looks completely serious. She raises an eyebrow. “Did you work out the probabilities of everyone’s death?” 

His eyes widen and then narrow as he returns her gaze. “Maybe.” 

She snorts and nudges him with her elbow. Donnie doesn’t seem to notice, continuing, “Only rough estimates, really. Too many variables. And Shepard—I never counted on Shepard. Too remote from our experience, I suppose.” 

Their arms are still touching. Only barely, but April is sharply, keenly aware of the light pressure where they touch. Of how his skin feels cool against hers. 

To distract herself, she says, “I never thought something would happen to Shepard, either. It’s silly, especially after what happened on Akuze, but somehow it just seemed safer out there.” 

“A lot of Alliance marines are pulling routine guard duty,” Donnie says. “Akuze could have been it for Shepard, but then again... she’s Shepard. Maybe our knack for getting into trouble rubbed off on her.” 

April smiles, but sadly. Shepard had needed their knack for getting out of trouble, too. Or maybe her luck had just run out. She clears her throat. “So where was I in your probability estimates?” 

Caught off guard, Donnie sputters and coughs on the mouthful he’d just swallowed. April waits with her eyebrows raised. 

“Er,” Donnie says. “I never... I mean, you... low. Your probability was always low. I, um, I wouldn’t...” He trails off, his mouth growing tight. “It was a silly exercise anyway. I was trying to be prepared, but I don’t think you can ever be prepared for something like this.” 

April presses her lips together. Her chest aches with tension. It’s too easy to guess how he might have ended that sentence: _I wouldn’t let that happen_. 

“I guess you can’t,” she says. “I just can’t help thinking... do you have any regrets, Donnie?” 

“What?” When he looks at her, his eyes are rounded in surprise. “A few, I suppose. I’ve made my share of mistakes, we all have, but we’ve done the best we could, and grown through it, so... not really? Why?” 

“I do,” April says. She feels flushed, the blood rushing through her veins and her heart beating too fast. She wants to lean into the place where his arm touches hers. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve made a lot of mistakes and wasted a lot of time.” 

“Really?” Donnie’s brow ridges go up. “What mistakes?” 

April gives in to the impulse. She’s fumbled for words and failed; let action speak for her, this time. She twists, stretching up onto her toes, pulling on his shoulder so she can tug him down to her height and kiss him. 

She’s kissed him on the cheek before. She used to do that a lot, when they were younger, to celebrate their victories. She’s never kissed him on the mouth. His skin is smooth, and he tastes like beer and ozone, and she can feel the shock ripple through both of them as he tenses. “Like I waited way too long to do that,” she says, breaking away. Her cheeks still feel warm. He hadn’t kissed her back—he’d been too stunned to move—and there’s a good chance she just made a terrible mistake. 

Donnie’s brown eyes are wider than she’s ever seen them. A flush is darkening his cheeks, too, below his mask, and his uncertainty buzzes through her mind. “April,” he says in a voice that isn’t quite steady, “you’re drunk.” 

“Only a little bit,” she says, fixing her eyes on his. She wraps her fingers around his wrist, a loose hold, but one that keeps him from pulling away. “I also know what I’m doing.” 

Donnie blinks and shakes his head once. “But... why—” 

“I missed you so much,” she says, low and intense. “I’ve been doing some thinking, and I don’t want to regret things I haven’t done any more. You’re the... you’re so important to me, and I love you so much, so... But if you don’t feel that way, then... it’s fine. No pressure.” She swallows, bracing herself. She might have guessed wrong. She might have been dwelling on daydreams, this whole time. He might have gotten over that adolescent crush a decade ago, or more. 

Donnie’s staring at her, and April’s heart sinks, until he says, “You thought I might not... love you?” 

She offers a shaky half-smile. “I wasn’t sure?” 

Donnie opens his mouth, and then shakes his head again. April can actually see the moment he gives up on words and decides to go with it, a split second before he kisses her back. 

Any doubts she had are immediately stilled. The fit is awkward at first—her nose bumps against his rounded face, but if she angles her head a little, they fit, and even awkward, it’s still sweet, because it’s _Donnie_ , kissing her back, and making a muffled noise when she slides her hand up his arm and over his shoulders. She sighs against his mouth when his arm goes tentatively around her waist, and leans into him in response, his plastron firm against her breasts. Closer and closer and they could just melt into each other, his skin turns warm everywhere she’s touching him, and— 

“Wahoo! Oh yeah, check it out, I am the _master_!” 

They jerk apart like somewhat shoved hot metal between them. April casts a wild look around, but no one seems to be looking in their direction. Mikey’s exulting and Raph has just thrown the controller to the ground in disgust; Leo and Casey are laughing. She takes a deep breath, sure her face is scarlet. She slides half a step away and whispers, “Maybe we should...” _take this somewhere private? Slow down? Speed up?_

“Guys! Donnie! C’mere, you have to come see this!” 

April bites her lip. She’s so keyed up, every nerve tingling. Her cheeks are hot, and the rest of her is cold now that she’s not holding him. 

Donnie’s eyes shift toward the living room and back to April. “... talk about this... later?” he murmurs. 

April nods, swallowing down her disappointment. Donnie takes a deep breath and runs his hand down her arm lightly. He hesitates another moment before stepping away to see what Mikey is crowing about. 

Alone in the kitchen, April puts the bottle to her lips and swallows the last of her beer, maybe too quickly. She turns to the sink and runs cold water, splashing it on her face and drying herself off with a dish towel. She smooths her hair with both hands, hoping she’s managed to make herself look more or less normal, and then she follows. 

Donnie looks up when she comes into the room and their eyes meet briefly before he ducks his head and turns his attention back to Mikey. April can feel her blush coming back already. 

_Ping_. 

Radar.

# 

Donnie wakes up with his head feeling like it’s split in two, and has to fight his way through more than the usual cloud of early-morning confusion to realize why. Wake, right, Casey said they ought to have a wake for Shepard, which means today is the day April’s going to the official funeral, so— 

_April kissed him_

He sits bolt upright in bed, and wonders for a wild moment if she’s _here_ , but no, he wasn’t that drunk (he never drinks enough to get _that_ drunk), he’s alone in the room, he’s pretty sure April was going to sleep on the couch, but there were definitely kisses. Two of them, to be exact; the second longer than the first. Her lips had been warm and soft, and she’d leaned into him like she couldn’t get close enough, looking up at him through her eyelashes and smiling. She’d been drinking, yes. They’d both been drinking. But still, she’d _said_ she knew what she was doing. Her eyes had been clear and lucid, and— 

He really needs to talk to her. Right now. 

Donnie hurtles out of bed, reaching for his gear and strapping it into place automatically. He fell asleep in his mask again, and he straightens it with one hand while throwing the door open with the other. 

April’s standing on the other side of the door. She’s still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Her hair falls down over her shoulder in a loose braid, wisps of it floating around her face. She smiles up at him. 

“Uh,” Donnie says. Any idea of what he was going to say is wiped clean out of his head. He settles for saying, “Hey, April.” 

Her smile is bright but somehow soft at the same time. She says, “I brought coffee?” 

She’s indeed holding a mug in her hands— _his_ mug, the oversized one she gave him that says “Scientist Fuel” and has a chip in the rim from when Mikey dropped it while doing dishes. “Oh, thank goodness,” he says, and almost snatches it out of her hand to take a drink. It’s just the way he likes it, strong and black. Not only does the coffee start to clear his head, it also keeps him from having to talk for a minute or two, and this makes it the best thing. 

April speaks while he’s still trying to kick his brain into gear, though. “Listen,” she says, reaching out, and wraps her fingers around the first finger of his free hand. He stares at her fingers a moment, small and pale and warm against his thick, green, calloused one, while April says, “It’s late, I overslept—I think we all overslept—and I have to get home and pack fast so I can make my flight.” 

“Oh,” Donnie says. He’s not sure which he feels more: relief that he doesn’t have to figure out the right thing to say, the right thing to ask, this very minute, or disappointment that she has to go now, today. 

Her fingers squeeze his. “But about last night— don’t freak out until I get back, okay?” 

He blinks at her and then narrows his eyes. “Who said I was going to freak out?” 

She smiles her crooked smile again, blue eyes soft. “Of course you were going to freak out. Don’t I know you well enough by now?” 

He has to admit that she does, so he can’t be too indignant, even if he might like to. If she’d left the lair without talking to him... well. She hasn’t, so he doesn’t need to fret about it. 

April’s smile widens and she squeezes again. “We’ll talk, and it’ll be good, okay? So don’t freak out until I get back and we can talk about it.” 

He takes a breath to settle himself, and another sip of coffee. “Okay.” 

April stretches up her toes and gives him a kiss, quick and light, just a peck, really, off-center so it lands right on the corner of his mouth, and could plausibly be passed off as a kiss on the cheek if anyone were looking. Which no one is. “Okay. Stay safe. I’ll be back in a few days.” 

“You stay safe, too,” he says. She will be safe. Of course she will. Council space is civilized territory. People take shuttles from Earth to the Citadel all the time. It’s also unknown territory, though, and that makes him just the slightest bit jittery. 

“You know it,” she says, and gives his hand another squeeze before releasing it. 

Just in time, too, as Raph’s door opens and he stumbles out. His mask is askew, he’s not wearing his pads, and his eyes are bloodshot. He looks even more like death warmed over than Donnie feels, which gives Donnie a certain satisfaction. Raph grunts something unintelligible at the sight of them and staggers off toward the bathroom. 

April bites back a giggle until the bathroom door swings shut, and then her laughter bursts out, bright and quickly stifled. Donnie’s mouth twitches, too, as he catches her eye. 

April kissed him. Three times now. He’ll go ahead and count that last one as three, and he holds on to the memory of each one of them, fireflies in a jar that he thinks of whenever he’s not remembering that Shepard is still gone.


	7. Chapter 7

Ashley Williams’ dress uniform is picture-perfect. She has not a fucking hair out of place. She’s wearing just enough makeup to cover the redness around her eyes. She’s got the funeral drill down. 

She _should_ , seeing as this is the third formal service she’s been to in the last year. There was the one for the rest of the 212. She would have missed that, but Shepard and Anderson had given her half a day’s leave from chasing down clues on the Citadel to go. She almost hadn’t wanted to go. Who wanted to show their face as the last survivor of their unit? But she’d gone anyway. She’d been glad that she had, in the end, that she could talk to Samesh Bhatia and the other family members who’d managed to make it to the service. Then there was the one they’d had for the LT, only a few weeks back. There’d been no time to do it right before they sneaked off to Ilos, so there’d been a short, quiet, subdued service after the Battle of the Citadel, and oh, how his mother had cried. Ashley hadn’t wanted to be there, either. No matter what Shepard said, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it should have been her. Not that she hadn’t been grateful when Shepard showed up like the fucking cavalry ( _noble six hundred_ , her brain whispered, though Shepard wasn’t about doomed charges, never) to save her ass, but she’d had a sinking feeling, too, a tightening in her gut. Shepard was a lot of things, but she couldn’t be in two places at once, and they’d flown away from Virmire down a man. 

And now this. 

There’d been no casket at Alenko’s service. Nothing left to bury, lost on the winds of Virmire forever. (There was a verse in there, somewhere, but Ash wasn’t a poet, just a reader.) There was going to be one at Shepard’s, and Ash hated that more, the fakeness of it. There wasn’t anything more to bury or burn, here. They hadn’t even found her. Word was they’d given up the search. Too much debris, and too much political fallout to leave Alliance ships hanging around in the Terminus. Fucking politicians. They were probably the ones who’d planned the memorial, too. It would have been a lot more honest to have nothing at all. Not like anyone had asked Ash, or anyone from the _Normandy_ crew. 

She makes a face at herself in the mirror before leaving the barracks. It’s been a few days since she’s seen most of the crew, two days since she lost her cool, and she really needs to act like a grown-up and apologize to Joker. 

_“You flyboys,” Ash sneered across the table. “Always so fucking cocky. So fucking sure of yourselves.”  
_

_On either side of her, Tali and Liara shifted uncomfortably. She couldn’t make out what Garrus or Wrex was thinking, but she didn’t much care. Her attention was zeroed in on the pilot across from her, who stared back at her.  
_

_Tali said, “Ash—” and Liara added, “Let’s not say anything we’ll regret.”  
_

_“No,” Joker said, a bit too loud. “I wanna hear what she has to say. Get it out, Chief.”  
_

_“Damn straight I will,” Ash said, leaning forward, jostling some of the glasses littering the table. “Cause you, you’re the most fucking cocky, aren’t you? So tell us, Joker, what was the really good reason you didn’t get out of your chair?”  
_

_He looked away, but for once his smart mouth didn’t have anything to say, and Ash shoved herself out of her seat, slamming both hands onto the table with a rattle of glass. “Huh? Answer me!”  
_

_“Okay,” Garrus said, arm suddenly between them. “I think that’s enough, Williams.”  
_

The service is on the Presidium—in front of the Relay Monument, in fact, which looks clean and shiny and innocuous. She imagines she can still feel it humming, a little bit. They’d moved what was left of the Mako away from the base of the Citadel Tower a long time ago. The scorch marks and rubble are all cleaned up, like nothing ever happened here. There are a lot of bodies in dress blues milling around the space, but it’s not hard for Ash to spot the one she’s looking for. 

Joker’s chair is parked at the end of the first row. Ashley hesitates for just a moment before stiffening her spine and marching over to the vacant seat next to him like she’s approaching a review board. 

“Hey,” she says, looking at the big-ass empty casket on the stand in front of her. “I’m sorry about the other night.” 

“It’s okay,” Joker says after a moment. 

She dares to look sideways then and meet his eyes. “No, it isn’t. I was being shitty.” 

He shrugs and then flinches, reaching across with his good hand to touch the one in the sling. “You weren’t saying anything I hadn’t said to myself.” 

“Still,” she says. 

He shakes his head. “Just drop it. And why the fuck is that casket so big, anyway?” he mutters. 

Ash snorts in spite of herself. “Seriously, what is it, eight feet long?” 

He smirks at her. She grins back, and dares to hope that they might be okay. 

# 

April O’Neil has been away from Earth before—there was that conference on Elysium, and the one on the salarian world of Mannovai—but she’s never been to the Citadel. 

Under other circumstances, it would have been exciting. Citadel Station is a mystery and a marvel, a miracle of technology, stunning in its scale, beautifully designed, from its monuments to its boutiques, filled with members of every sentient species. The most cosmopolitan place in the galaxy. 

It’s a little less glamorous now, still wrecked after the attack. April took a good look on the viewscreen as her flight came in. One of the Citadel’s five massive ward arms was still mostly dark, and when she took a skycar from the port to her hotel, she could see the damage to several of the others, cratered and scorched. She didn’t bother to hide her gawking, and neither did anyone else on her ship. 

Here on the Presidium, where they’re holding the memorial, everything is nearly pristine. The walkways are white, smooth arches, the pools and fountains are clear and sparkling. There are occasional blackened marks here and there, but that’s all. It’s unsettling. It’s too easy to forget the attack, only a few weeks past. It’s too easy to think of the Citadel as that gleaming, cosmopolitan place from pictures and vids, when April knows the truth from Shepard’s files: the Citadel is a trap, a honey-sweet piece of bait for the hapless spacefaring organics who stumble into it. It may be beautiful, but it’s a beauty that hides poison, the beauty of a spider’s web. 

April sees several of the odd insect-like Keepers pacing about, moving debris, and has to suppress a shudder. Shepard had talked about them, too, how they were engineered out of having feeling or volition, no matter how organic they are. To April, they feel like blank spots, incomprehensible holes in her sense of the minds around her. They are there, and yet not, as if she brushed against something invisible and inexplicably cold. 

Her awareness of them fades away as she joins the crowd attending the memorial service. There are so many minds, and a mental cloud of grief and sadness heavy enough to make the Presidium’s artificial, perfect sunny day seem cloudy. There are other emotions running through the crowd, too: guilt and regret, curiosity, boredom, occasional veins of jealousy, and a few others April can’t name. They are reassuringly alive, organic, sentient, pulsing with a thousand different thoughts and reactions. Even the alien minds blend in. Their feelings may smell—taste—feel different, to that mental sense that she’s never developed a real vocabulary for, but they’re still full of _life._ Even the asari feel alive. April’s never been able to read much from the minds of the few asari she’s met. As best she can guess, it’s something to do with their native biotics. But their minds still have a certain warmth about them—they’re smooth, in a way, as if she were looking at a brightly lit lake she couldn’t see into—and they’re nothing like the eerie blankness of the Keepers. 

April smooths her skirt, hoping she can blend into the crowd, too. Black isn’t really her color. The dress she’s wearing (hastily bought a few years back for the funeral of a grad school professor) makes her look washed-out and ill. If she’s going to wear black, she’d rather be in fighting gear, armed and masked, ready to merge with the shadows. Not as she is, with her hair up, exposing her neck, carrying a bunch of white roses tied together with colored ribbons. 

She has to remind herself that no one is going to see through her; she doesn’t wear her secrets written on her face. And in this crowd, hardly anyone is even going to notice her. 

There are a lot of humans in Alliance dress blues, straight and upright and organized, gathered in seats toward the front, but there are enough humans in civilian clothes that April doesn’t stand out. There’s a noticeable number of aliens, too. There are quite a few turians; at first, April has trouble distinguishing between the turian Citadel Security officers who are handling security for the event, and the ones attending, but it comes clear that there are more than a few attending. She also spies a knot of salarians talking quietly together. Other aliens are scattered through the crowd: turians, salarians, asari, a few hanar floating along, some elcor here and there, and even a couple of volus, though the latter, short and rotund in their exosuits, are hard to spot among the taller species. April feels a swell of sympathy for them, trundling along in a galaxy built for taller people who breathe different air. 

She drifts as far forward as she can before taking an unoccupied seat, and sits quietly. The service is... ordinary. Bland. There are a lot of speeches. Councilor Anderson’s is the first, and the most moving. Shepard had talked about the older man with fondness and respect, and his grief is a bright spot in April’s awareness, bitter and salty. It spreads through the crowd, setting people off into sniffles or quiet contemplation, as he speaks, and the woman he talks about feels like the one April knew: driven, bold, compassionate, resolute. 

The rest of the speeches, though, wear on. April hardly remembers the names of any of the speakers, and the person they talk about feels like a statue: larger-than-life, but stiff and unreal. The audience gets restless, their thoughts drifting gray or tan with boredom. When they end, finally, and brass instruments play a dirge, many people are only too glad to move. Many of them leave, alone or murmuring in twos and threes. April joins the rest of the crowd, the ones lining up to pay their respects to the empty coffin. It’s just a symbolic gesture, but one that at least a hundred people feel moved to make. 

By the time April reaches the front of the crowd, there is already a heap of flowers mounded against the casket. Mingled among the blossoms are other odds and ends: a few medals, a handful of geth figures, some scraps of paper and small pics. April lays down her own bundle of roses: white, the petals just opening, the stems wrapped in a cascade of ribbon, orange and blue and red and purple and yellow and black. It weighs next to nothing, but April’s hands feel too light and too empty once she’s set them down. She lays one hand on the smooth lid for a moment, and thinks, _We miss you. We’d have been there, if we could_ , even though she knows the coffin is empty. 

She stands longer than she ought to; the people immediately behind her are grumbling. Reluctantly, April finally turns away, and as she moves past the first row, hears someone say: “... got to do something.” 

April turns her head to look at the speaker and freezes, breaking her stride; she collects herself a moment later and steps to the side so the person behind her doesn’t run into her. 

This must be Shepard’s crew. 

Oh, not all of them; there were casualties other than Shepard when the _Normandy_ was lost, and not all of the surviving crew is standing right there. But April recognizes them with a clarity like a struck bell. There’s a woman in Alliance uniform with iron-gray hair, and another, younger woman, with dark hair in a severe knot, and a bearded man in a hoverchair. There’s an asari in a deep-blue dress, dabbing at her swollen eyes with a delicate handkerchief, and a quarian with swaths of black and violet fabric attached to her envirosuit. There’s the largest krogan April’s ever been close to, with vicious scars slashing across his face, in massive red armor that somehow looks old-fashioned, and a turian with bold blue marks, in blue and black armor. 

_This team was special_ , Shepard had said. And, _you know and I know what it’s like to work with a really close-knit team, right?_ She’d talked about them, at the party and afterward, and April had felt the currents of affection in her head. 

_She loved you_. The words rise up in her throat, and she closes her lips to keep them back. Not hers to say, and they won’t know her; saying anything will only raise more questions than she can answer. But they’re here now, these people out of Shepard’s stories, and April can’t help but draw a little closer. 

“There must be an investigation,” the asari says. “They have to— they haven’t even found her.” 

“No one’s in a position to authorize an in-depth investigation in the Terminus Systems,” the turian replies. His thoughts are fissured with anger beneath the grief, the cracks deep and spreading. “No one’s looking.”  
  
“Politics,” says the dark-haired woman. “They’re all too busy worrying about not pissing off people who hate them anyway. ‘Cause that makes sense.” 

The krogan cuts in. “Your human government doesn’t look a lot better than the Council, Williams.” 

“They’re just politicians, too,” she says, her jaw tightening. 

“But then,” the krogan continues, “guess you’ve got yourselves a seat on the Council now, so that figures.” 

Williams’ expression darkens. 

“Let’s not argue,” the quarian says, voice rising. She twists her long fingers together. 

“Especially not here,” adds the older woman gently. “This isn’t the time or the place.” 

“Not much time left,” says the man in the chair. “Better tear a strip off each other while we can.” 

Williams flinches at that, and there’s a short, awkward silence. April can feel regret running into the space like water, before the turian clears his throat and says, “When are you headed out?” 

“Day after tomorrow.” Williams scuffs one foot along the smooth tile flooring. “Back to Arcturus for debriefing and reassignment.” 

“Won’t that be a blast,” the man mutters under his breath. 

There’s another short silence. Their grief is palpable, heavy and dark with guilt and veins of anger. It reminds April of the mood at home before the wake, familiar enough to draw her in, but she’s beginning to feel like a voyeur. She’s hiding in plain sight, all right, clasping her hands and apparently studying her feet,but she really has no business being here and listening to their conversation so intently. The asari is starting to weep again, and Williams reaches out to pat her on the shoulder, a little rough and awkward. The krogan, oddly, seems almost the calmest of them, next to the older woman; his sorrow is underlaid with a stony resolve. The rest of them are racked with sorrow, and no matter how much like her own it feels, April’s still an intruder. There’s no real comfort she can give them. She ought to leave them be and let them support each other. 

She’s just starting to move away, as unobtrusively as she can, when the quarian says, “They’re still talking about geth, that’s all they’re saying, but... I saw the scans. That wasn’t a geth ship.” 

April stops in her tracks, and hopes her sudden movement isn’t too obvious. This is the first she’s heard that suggestion. None of the news reports she’s seen have mentioned anything but the geth. Neither has Donnie, for all his trawling through the news net. 

“I saw the _ship_ ,” says the man bitterly. “That wasn’t any geth anything, and I think I’ve seen my share of geth ships at this point.” 

The krogan says, “Wasn’t a Reaper, either, or I none of us would be here.” 

The silence this time has an edge of fear to it. April can read their conviction easily. They all know the stakes, just as Shepard told her and the turtles back at home. They’re equally certain of what they saw when their ship was destroyed, when Shepard— 

The turian clears his throat and says, “I may not know what that thing was, but I know the Reapers have to be stopped.” 

“We all know that, Garrus,” says the quarian, but the exasperated edge to her voice is belied by the anxiety in her thoughts, and the way she’s still wringing her hands. 

“The question is, what are your governments going to do about it?” says the krogan, challenging. 

“They have to do something,” the asari says softly. 

April slips away quietly, blending into the flow of humans still leaving the service. She bites her lip, trying to set her thoughts in order. Not a geth ship—they were all sure of that. Not a geth ship, but something else, and they were afraid, not only of the Reapers, but of their own governments. The fear settles into the back of April’s mind, a cold, spiky weight. They’re right to worry, aren’t they? What Shepard had said about the Reapers sounds outrageous. There’s no way around that. If you didn’t trust Shepard completely—or you didn’t have a certain experience with the unbelievable and impossible—then why would you put any faith in the idea of murderous mechanical space squid? 

April’s omni-tool buzzes gently against her wrist. She checks it, and smiles at once. Message from Donnie. 

Shepard’s crew will do what they have to do, and Shepard’s family—April and Casey and the turtles and Splinter—will do their part. She can already imagine it. She’ll go home and tell them what she’s learned, and they’ll sit around the battered table strategizing, over pizza and coffee and cookies. She’ll help Donnie sift through Shepard’s files, they’ll all talk things out, make plans and stockpile (and argue, and joke, because that’s what they do, even about this). 

She brings up the message. It reads: _Saw the service was over. You okay?_

April’s eyes are still sore from the tears she’s shed in the last few days, and her friend’s death still feels like a hole in her chest. She smiles, all the same. She knows what Shepard wanted for her, and sometimes grief and joy come mixed. _Yeah, I’m okay_ , she writes back, _and I’ll be home tomorrow. I’ll see you soon._


End file.
